Sugai Kumi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kumi Sugaï (1962)

Sugai Kumi ( Japanese 菅 井 汲 ; born March 13, 1919 in Kobe , Japan ; † May 14, 1996 in Kobe) was a Japanese painter , graphic artist and sculptor .

Sugai was one of the most important exponents of modern Japanese art and abstract painting after World War II . He was one of the first Japanese artists to consistently translate Japan's artistic traditions into abstract expressionism with a western style.

biography

Sugai was raised with a foster family for the first six years of his life before returning to his family, who were of Malay origin. He attended elementary school in Mikage . At the age of nine, Sugai painted his first oil paintings. He spent the years 1930 and 1931 in the hospital because of a heart disease.

From 1933 Sugai studied for some time at the Art Academy in Osaka . He then worked as a commercial artist and illustrator. Towards the end of the 1940s he began to deal intensively with modern western painting . He studied the art of Jackson Pollock , Paul Klee , Joan Miró , Alexander Calder and Max Ernst . In 1952 Sugai moved to Paris and began studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . In the same year he started lithography and worked as a painter and sculptor. He was able to conclude contracts with important galleries in Paris and therefore chose France as the center of his life. He lived in Paris until shortly before his death in 1996.

In 1956 he married Mitsuko Kawamoto , a Japanese woman . In the 1950s his art received international attention. In 1959, Kumi Sugai was a participant in documenta II in Kassel . He was also a participant and laureate of the Venice Biennale (1962) and documenta III 1964. He was honored as the best foreign artist in 1965 at the São Paulo Biennale and received the Grand Prix of the Krakow Biennale in 1966 and the Honorary Prize of the Biennale for Graphics in Oslo in 1972.

Sugai's painting of the 50s was a painterly translation of Japanese calligraphy with bold brushstrokes in abstract forms. After 1962, inspired by the art of Max Pechstein , he began with paintings that varied basic geometric shapes such as circles, triangles and squares and lined them up.

A serious car accident of his wife in 1967 forced him to take a year off from work. In 1969 he returned to Japan for the first time for a visit. In Japan he had become a celebrity as an artist, numerous museums and galleries showed his works. From that point on, he kept commuting back and forth between Japan and Europe.

Sugai died on May 14, 1996 at the age of 77 in his Japanese hometown of Kobe.

Web links (images)

At the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo :

Sources and literature

  • Kumi Sugai , exhibition catalog for the exhibition from September 19 to October 20, 1963, Kestner Society Hanover, with introductory notes by Wieland Schmied
  • Jean-Clarence Lambert: SUGAÏ monograph . Editions Kara, Geneva 1990

Web links

Commons : Kumi Sugai  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Sugai is the family name, Kumi the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Sugai, Kumi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 菅 井 汲 (Japanese); Sugaï, Kumi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese painter and printmaker
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Kobe , Japan
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1996
Place of death Kobe , Japan