What comes to mind when you hear "Japanese abstract art"? Postwar Japan was home to an abstract art group that museums around the world still celebrate today: the Gutai Art Association, born in Ashiya, Hyogo.
Drawing on introductions by The National Art Center, Tokyo, and Tokyo Art Beat, this post looks at what kind of group Gutai was.
A group founded in Ashiya in 1954
The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture. At its center was Jiro Yoshihara, a painter already active before the war. It began in Ashiya, where Yoshihara lived, and disbanded shortly after his death in 1972, about eighteen years of activity.
The National Art Center, Tokyo, describes Gutai as a group that sought, through its work, to offer concrete proof that the human spirit is free.
"Don't imitate others. Create what has never existed."
Yoshihara told his young artists again and again: don't imitate others; create something that has never been made before. It is the phrase almost always quoted whenever Gutai is discussed.
Rather than teaching one way to paint, he urged each member to find an expression only they could make. As a result, every member's work became entirely their own.
Kazuo Shiraga, who painted with his feet
One of the best-known members is Kazuo Shiraga, from Amagasaki, Hyogo. He laid a canvas on the floor, piled on paint, and holding a rope hung from the ceiling, spread the paint with his bare feet. His large abstract works are now in museum collections in Japan and abroad.
Other members burst through paper screens with their whole bodies or threw bottles of paint at the canvas, boldly questioning what painting itself could be.
"GUTAI," rediscovered by the world
From the 2000s, Gutai was widely reassessed overseas. In 2013, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held the exhibition "Gutai: Splendid Playground." Today the group is known around the world, under the name GUTAI, as one of the defining movements of postwar Japanese art.
In 2022, a major retrospective, "Gutai Art Association: Into the Unknown World, Differentiation and Integration," was held at two museums in Osaka, the Nakanoshima Museum of Art and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.
Abstract art: a painting only that person could make
Looking at Gutai works, I feel that abstract art conveys not so much what is depicted as what the artist offered of themselves. Because each work is no one's imitation, it still moves people seventy years later.
About my commissions
I am a Japanese artist based in Yamagata, and I paint commissioned abstract works. I listen to each person's journey, what they hold dear, and the future they want to live, then paint a one-of-a-kind original. You can read how to commission a work in How to Commission an Abstract Painting. Works for yourself or someone dear to you are introduced on the PERSONAL ORDER ART page, and works for companies and shops on the BUSINESS ART page.
Sources
The National Art Center, Tokyo, Art Commons (Gutai Art Association: Into the Unknown World)
Tokyo Art Beat (Three keywords for understanding Gutai)
Internet Museum (Kazuo Shiraga exhibition report)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Gutai: Splendid Playground)
