Senkichiro Nasaka - Gutai Group

 

 Senkichiro Nasaka (Japanese, 1923–2014)
"After studying art colleges, Senkichiro Nasaka enters the Kyoto City Painting University: encounters Kazuo Shiraga who is in the same class. Nasaka makes a career switch from Japanese painting to Oil painting in 1960s. It is until in 1965 that Nasaka presents his work to the 15th Gutai Art Echibition and becomes member of Gutai Art Association subsequently. During his Gutai period, there is a great change in the style from tableaux works influenced by Art Informel to hardedge imagery such as light art and kinetic art, which becomes representative style of the later Gutai. At Guggenheim Museum’s retrospective exhibition Gutai: Splendid Playground in 2013, Nasaka reproduces his past work made of aluminum tubes, which are running across the whole exhibition space like a scaffold. Nevertheless, the works from his early period of Gutai, characterized by nuanced marriage of various colors are particularly in high demand among collectors."(ocula.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sofu Teshigahara - Modernism and the Avant-Garde in Japan

 

 "Sofu Teshigahara was born in 1900 as the eldest son of Ikebana artist Wafu Teshigahara. Starting to take lessons in Ikebana from childhood, he gradually began to attract attention for his outstanding talent however, in questioning the formalistic traditions of Ikebana, he broke away from his father to establish the Sogetsu School of Ikebana in 1927. Together with Houun Ohara and Yukio Nakagawa, he eventually came to lead the postwar “avant-garde Ikebana movement,” which deviated from conventional practices of Ikebana, and resulted in its unprecedented and thriving popularity.
Teshigahara, who continued to express a strong interest in European art trends since prior to the war, had engaged in attempts to incorporate the experimental spirit of modern art into the context of Ikebana. During the postwar reconstruction period, he created works such as “Sanpo” [Walk] (1951) and “Kikansha” [Locomotive] (1951) combining vases crafted from iron with plants, later presenting the iron-based sculptural work “Mure” [Flock] (1953) that had dismissed the use of flowers entirely. In producing this work, Teshigahara had left a note that stated, “I hope to demonstrate that it is possible to create expressions using anything.” Through treating materials such as iron, stone, and wood as equivalent to flowers, he served to liberate Ikebana from its framework that had been reduced to a mere formality...The works of Teshigahara that had instilled Ikebana with a new modern figurativeness, had attracted the attention of art historians and artists from an early stage. From the early 1950s, he participated in group exhibitions in museums both in Japan and abroad, also presenting solo exhibitions in numerous museums and galleries such as the National Museum of Kyoto (1967) and the Palais Galliera (Paris, 1971). Michel Tapié, a theoretical promoter of Art Informel who made his first visit to Japan in 1957, had highly praised Teshigahara as one of the best avant-garde sculptors, and featured his works in many of the exhibitions he curated. Teshigahara had also significantly influenced Japanese art history as mentor and patron of avant-garde art, hosting the events by John Cage and David Tudor (1962) and Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s Japan performance (1964) at the Sogetsu Art Center under the direction of his son Hiroshi."(www.takaishiigallery.com)

 

 

 

Yasuo Sum - Japanese Avant-garde Art

"Yasuo Sumi was born in 1925 - 2015. After joining Gutai in 1955, Sumi becomes a member of Art Club, the group represented by Taro Okamoto. He participated in all the Gutai exhibitions from the first to the 21st one. Furthermore he has been invited to many exhibitions organized by public museums such as Tokyo City Modern Art Museum, Kyoto City Modern Art Museum, Hyogo Prefecture Museum, Osaka City Modern Art Museum, Ashiya City Museum, Chiba City Art Museum, Miyagi Prefecture Art Museum, Fukuoka City Art Museum, Kitakyushu City Art Museum, Itami City Art Museum, Shibuya Art Museum. He also held many exhibitions in the most famous galleries in Tokyo, Osaka and Itami. Sumi has been invited to the 45th Venice Biennale (Path to the East) with a project promoted by the Japan Foundation and the Italian Government. He held many exhibitions abroad, such as Galerie National du Jeu de Paume in Paris; New York's Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Cultural Exchange Center (solo exhibition) in US; Auckland Museum in Australia; Rome Contemporary Art Museum, Torino Figurative Gallery, Torino International Aesthetic Studio, Milan Art Center, Fondazione Morra in Naples. in Italy; Rauma Art Museum, Helsinki Art Academy in Finland; Rotterdam Design House in Netherlands; Off Center in Canada; and also in England and China. Plenty of his works have become property of public national museums all over the world. Sumi is today an active member of the AU Group and participates to the group exhibitions.He uses abaci, vibrators and combs for his works. While painting and performing Sumi always wears a pair of geta (woodden japanese shoes) and a bangasa (japanese umbrella), and uses a soroban (japanese abacus). But the use of these instruments is peculiar: sorobans are, for example, used, together with japanese ink to create straight and curved lines on papers and canvas. Bangasa is used to blow violently canvases, thus making them damaged. Vibrators are used to spread rhytmically colours on papers and canvases."(abc-arte.com )

Shozo Shimamoto - Gutai Group - Japanese Avant-Garde Art

"Shozo Shimamoto was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1928. Together with Jiro Yoshihara, he was co-founder of the Gutai group, and he is considered one of the most experimental artists in the period after World War II. Gutai, the first radical artistic movement in Japan, developed in the late fifties, more or less contemporary with the informal movement in European and American art. Its main aim was to give new life to the Japanese artistic tradition. A work of art, for them, was no longer a simple support, but became a physical transposition of the artist's actions, which is what (like in action painting) turns the work of art into an action. Shimamoto, a pivotal figure in the movement, felt the need for new signs of expression that he found both in action and matter. "(fondazionemorra.org)

More information about the artist