April 8, 2008(2008-04-08) (aged 83) Amagasaki, Japan
Occupation
Painter
Nationality
Japanese
Kazuo Shiraga (白髪 一雄, Shiraga Kazuo, August 12, 1924 – April 8, 2008) was a Japanese abstract painter and the first-generation member of the postwar artists collective Gutai Art Association (Gutai). As a Gutai member, he was a prolific, inventive, and pioneering experimentalist who tackled a range of media: in addition to painting, he worked in performance art, three-dimensional object making, conceptual art, and installations, many of which are preserved only in documentary photos and films.
Shiraga is best known for his abstract paintings, or the so-called “foot painting”, which he created by spreading oil paint initially on paper and later on canvas with his feet. Through this original method he had invented in 1954, he made a critical engagement with the tradition of painting, the result of which resonated with European and American gestural abstraction of the 1950s, such as Informel and Abstract Expressionism. In the 1960s and 1970s, he reintroduced tools such as boards and spatulas for spreading the paint.
His experiments outside painting, such as Challenging Mud and Ultramodern Sanbasō, were closely associated with the notion of “picturing,” derived from e (絵), or “picture” in Japanese, that Gutai members shared in exploring new ways of painting. At the same time, his innovations were at times associated with his embrace of violence and the grotesque, which Shiraga had been fascinated with since his childhood.
Among the Gutai members who were promoted by the French art critic Michel Tapié in Europe and the US, Shiraga was most recognized after the leader Jirō Yoshihara and most commercially successful as a solo artist as early as the late 1950s; and his success continues to date with in the international auctions.
KazuoShiraga (白髪 一雄, ShiragaKazuo, August 12, 1924 – April 8, 2008) was a Japanese abstract painter and the first-generation member of the postwar artists...
she received little formal fine arts training, Shiraga began making art after marrying KazuoShiraga in 1948 at the age of 20. In 1952, She joined Zero...
Japanese architect KazuoShiraga (白髪 一雄, 1924–2008), Japanese abstract painter Kazuo Sugimoto (杉本 和陽, born 1991), Japanese shogi player Kazuo Takahashi (高橋...
Gutai group led by Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, KazuoShiraga, and Shimamoto Shozo made the materials of art-making come to life with...
works were presented, including Chirisei Kyubiki by the Japanese artist KazuoShiraga and painted in 1960. The museum was eventually inaugurated on 8 November...
artists of Zero-kai (Zero Society) Akira Kanayama, Saburō Murakami, KazuoShiraga, and Atsuko Tanaka. By choosing the Japanese term gutai, which means...
with other young members of the Shin Seisaku Association, including KazuoShiraga and Saburō Murakami. Kanayama also invited Atsuko Tanaka, who was then...
1923) 2007 – Sol LeWitt, American painter and sculptor (b. 1928) 2008 – KazuoShiraga, Japanese painter (b. 1924) 2009 – Richard de Mille, American Scientologist...
1954, and were later joined by fellow Genbi members Akira Kanayama, KazuoShiraga, and Atsuko Tanaka. It is estimated that Genbi had about 100 registered...
The Art of KazuoShiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga, exh. cat., Dallas Museum of Art, 2015, 22–39. Kawasaki, Kōichi, “Out of Gutai: ShiragaKazuo and Motonaga...
is also responsible for approaching members of the Zero-kai group, KazuoShiraga, Saburo Murakami, Atsuko Tanaka, and Akira Kanayama, to join Gutai after...
collectives in the 1960s and 1970s such as Genpei Akasegawa, Hi-Red Center, KazuoShiraga, Gutai, and Mono-ha. In 2017, she published a single-authored scholarly...
body of work into "unrealistic, almost abstract shapes". Around 1962, KazuoShiraga, Senkichiro's classmate at the Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting...
Teh-Chun, Mark Rothko, Joan Miro, Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, KazuoShiraga, Robert Motherwell, among others. The gallery was among the 500 best...
invitation: they included Akira Kanayama, Saburō Murakami, Atsuko Tanaka, and KazuoShiraga, who belonged to a small artist group Zerokai (Zero Society) and also...
his death). In 1952 Murakami formed the Zero-kai (Zero Group) with KazuoShiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, and Akira Kanayama, all fellows from the Shinseisaku...
Thomas Ruff Claude Rutault Richard Serra Shozo Shimamoto Fujiko ShiragaKazuoShiraga Thomas Schütte Curt Stenvert Dominique Stroobant Shiro Tsujimura...
or The Annihilation of Space at Misako & Rosen (Tokyo, Japan) 2017 – KazuoShiraga and Kour Pour: Earthquakes and The Mid Winter Burning Sun at Ever Gold...
published August, 1973 in Bijutsu Techo), Hikosaka analyzes the practice of KazuoShiraga to critque Gutai's emphasis on the activity of art making over “poesis...
Lissone, Italy, in 1959, alongside artists such as Kawabata Minoru, ShiragaKazuo, Fukushima Hideko, Motonaga Sadamasa, and Yves Klein. Katsura continued...
by musicians.: 26 Exploiting the "action" in "action painting," as ShiragaKazuo and Georges Mathieu had done before him, the extremely physical element...
psychophysical experience, an "art of matter as it is" as explained by ShiragaKazuo in 1956. Gutai became connected with a sort of artistic mass-production...
Global Information