Kazuo Shiraga

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Kazuo Shiraga ( Japanese 白 髪 一 雄 , Shiraga Kazuo ; born August 12, 1924 in Amagasaki , Hyōgo Prefecture , Japan ; † April 8, 2008 ibid) was a Japanese modern artist .

Life

Shiraga was born into a family of kimonos traders . From 1937 he got to know translations of works of classical Chinese literature at the middle school of his hometown. The following year he painted in oils for the first time, encouraged by his father and an art teacher who taught this technique, which was new to Japan, in a painting school. In 1942 he began studying classical Japanese painting Nihonga at the Kyōto Art School , the Kyōto-shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku . In 1944 he was drafted into the Japanese army in Osaka , but not ordered to work outside of Japan.

After the end of World War II , Shiraga returned to study. He became seriously ill in 1946 and was confined to bed for six months. During this time, his fellow student Akira Kanayama gave him two books by Toyama Usaburo . 1948 completed his studies at the Kyōtoer Kunsthochschule and married. In the same year he exhibited his first pictures on the advice of his teacher Ito Tsuguro . In 1951 he got to know Jackson Pollock's painting style in an exhibition.

In 1952 the contemporary art discussion group was founded, in whose exhibitions Shiraga and his painter friends participate. Together with Saburo Murakami and Akira Kanayama, he founded Zero-kai ("Zero Society"), to which Atsuko Tanaka later also joined. In 1953 he created his first abstract painting using a palette knife. He also created paintings in which he applied the oil paints directly with his hands and fingers. In the following year he created his first foot paintings , which he created hanging on ropes. Murakami and Shiraga had their first exhibition in a department store in Osaka in 1953. In another department store in town, he showed his foot paintings in a group exhibition of the Zero Society . This dissolved in 1955 by joining the Gutai Association ("Concrete"). Shiraga participated in Gutai's first group exhibition at the Ohara Gaikan in Tokyo . In the same year, his performance paintings, Challenging Mud and Red Logs, attracted attention as forms of action painting . Since then he has been writing about his art in Gutai magazine . In 1957 he shows Sanbasō-Super Modern , in which he dances on stage and shot arrows at canvases. In the same year, the French art critic Michel Tapié , accompanied by Georges Mathieu and Imai Toshimitsu, traveled to Japan and united Gutai with his art informel movement .

In September 1958, Shiraga and Gutai became known through an exhibition in the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City , which was then shown at various stations in the USA and Canada . Shiraga signed a contract with Tapié to sell his works in Europe. He began to paint on canvas and to sign his paintings in Japanese with Kanji . He also gave his works the names of the Suikoden warriors so that they can be better distinguished. Until then he had only called them works . The artist Allan Kaprow calls Shiraga the founder of performance art . From this period of action painting , his work Chijukusei Gotenrai from 1961, which was painted with the feet, among other things , achieved proceeds of approx. € 2.6 million at an auction in Munich's Haus Ketterer on December 6, 2014.

From 1966 the formats of his paintings became smaller, he gave up the foot painting and produced his squeeze paintings , in which he applied the colors with his feet and a wooden club or a wooden plate. He made contact with the French avant-garde Jean-Jacques Lebel . From 1968 on he taught art in Osaka, where he introduced his students to modern western art.

In 1971 Shiraga gave up painting and began as a monk in the temple Enryaku-ji（延 暦 寺） of the Tendai -Syuu (天台 宗) on Mount Hiei-zan　（比叡 山） near Kyoto. From 1972 he began to paint there again and used the particularly liquid alkyd paints . His palette was mainly reduced to black and white. Among other things, he titled his paintings with reference to history and esoteric Buddhism . In 1986 he traveled to Europe for the first time for two solo exhibitions of his works in Paris .

Prizes and awards

  • 2002: Osaka Art Prize

Exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 1993: Musée d'Art Moderne , Ville de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
  • 2001: Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art Kobe , Japan.
  • 2009: Yokosuka Museum of Art , Yokosuka, Japan.
  • 2009/2010: Kazuo Shirage: Six Decades , McCaffrey Fine Art, New York City, USA.
  • 2011: Kazuo Shiraga , McCaffrey Fine Art.
  • 2012: Kazuo Shiraga , Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium.
  • Compagnia dell'Arte , Serravalle, San Marino.
  • Hauser & Wirth , Zurich / London / New York.
  • Annely Juda Fine Art , London.
  • 2013: Christie's , Paris.
  • 2014: Auction house Philips New York.
  • 2014: Kazuo Shiraga , Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Hong Kong.

Web links

literature

  • Delia Cinha (Ed.): Action Painting: Jackson Pollock . Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2008. ISBN 978-3-7757-2103-5 .
  • Vera Wolff: Not the real thing at all . On the cultural translation of artistic techniques using the example of Japanese oil painting, in: Cultural translations , ed. by Anika Keinz, Klaus Schönberger and Vera Wolff. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2012, pp. 67–96. ISBN 978-3-496-02833-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Making millions with your feet in FAZ of December 13, 2014, page 17
personal data
SURNAME Shiraga, Kazuo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 白 髪 一 雄 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese action painting painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Amagasaki , Hyogo Prefecture , Japan
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 2008
Place of death Amagasaki