手绘 | Drawing

Duration : 11:00-19:00 (Closed on Monday）

Opening : 2023.08.18-2023.10.08

Venue : Room 108, No. 3, Lane 1363, Middle Fuxing Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China 200031

Tel : +86 (0)21 5496 1918

Web : https://www.shunartdesign.com

Artist : 吉原 治良｜Jiro YOSHIHARA (1905-1972) 堀尾 贞治｜Sadaharu HORIO (1939-2018) 今井 俊满｜Toshimitsu IMAI (1928-2002)

The Highlights of Drawing

In 1954, Gutai Art Association was born as an art group in the Ashiya area of Kansai. Its leader, Yoshihara Jiro, led a group of young, unknown artists to form the group and began publishing their publication, Gutai, to give voice to the works and exhibitions of the members of the Gutai group, with the names of the artists identified only in English, clearly in the hope that the publication itself would be international.

Motonaga Sadamasa once described, “Regardless of age, status, qualifications, fame, money and so on, none of our members could compete with him, and we all obeyed in front of him”. He was also an academic committee member of the exhibition (GENBI exhibition) of Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art and the exhibition of Ashiya City Museum of Art and History. He built an art space in the old warehouse of his family’s property for members of the Gutai Art Association to exhibit their works, and this established the basis for the presentation of the concepts and works of the Gutai Group, whose manifesto states, “We need to give concrete evidence of our spiritual freedom (the inner nature of the human being) through material (works of art)”. This is the group’s manifesto and the source of the name of Gutai group.

In addition to creating the space and launching the periodical, the encounter of French critics and curators Michel Tapié and Jiro was significant. The exchange exhibition between Europe Art Informel and Gutai led to a leap forward in internationalising the Gutai group artists. From the initial indifference of the Kansai art critics to the explosive impact of performance art on the art world at the time in the group exhibition at the Ohara School of Ikebana, it played an essential role in the exposure of the Gutai group.

Few art groups survived for 18 years, but Jiro’s death in 1972 led to the end of Gutai, which had about 60 artists in its 18-year history. Yoshihara Jiro’s hand-drawn works were probably painted between 1955 and 1965 in this exhibition and Horio Sadaharu’s hand-drawn works in 2013. So, Jiro’s pieces are from the Gutai period, while Sadaharu’s are from the post-Gutai period.

Artist Toshimitsu Imai is one of the representative artists of Japan’s domestic Art Informel. Imai’s oil paintings on paper also show the different transformations and trends in the works of Japanese Gutai and European Art Informel artists through the exchange of media with Tapié.

Our exhibition of hand-drawn and small oil paintings on paper will allow viewers to review the history of Gutai. We hope that this exhibition will give the audience a chance to look back at the history of Gutai and to see and understand  that Gutai, the post-World War II art group in the Kansai region, was not only one of the first major Japanese contempo rary art groups to be recognised in the world’s art world, but it also caused waves of excitement in the contemporary art  of the period that followed it. 

Shun Writing on the high-speed train from Wuhan to Shanghai

2023.8.8