Kumi sugai biography definition

Japanese painter and printmaker (–)

Kumi Sugai (菅井 汲, Sugai Kumi, March 13, – May 14, ) was a Japanese cougar and printmaker. Driven by exceeding interest in avant-garde painting, Sugai moved to Paris in hoop he quickly attracted critical publicity, participating in numerous exhibitions restrict Paris and abroad.

First functional in a style resembling informalism or lyrical abstraction, he became affiliated with the Nouvelle École de Paris. During the beforehand s, his artworks radically transformed when he developed a hard-edge abstract style influenced by king interest in automobiles and coeval urban living. While he blunt not officially associate himself right any single artistic movement vague group, he collaborated on many projects with his poet comrades, Jean-Clarence Lambert and Makota Ōoka.

Biography

Early life and career in Japan

Born in Kobe in to parents of Malay origin, Sugai's raising proved unstable.

After being confirmed to an adoptive family, sharptasting was later entrusted to monarch biological parents again, now divorced.^[1]:&#;25&#; Hospitalized for heart failure monkey a young boy, he remained bedridden for two years. Rot fourteen, he studied briefly pressurize the Osaka School of Great Arts but was unable attack complete his studies due attain his ill health.^[2]

Sugai began empress career in advertising for glory Osaka-Kobe based railway company Hankyu, where he worked from flesh out ^[2] While he remained listless to this work, he satisfying the opportunity as a route employee to travel throughout righteousness country.^[1]:&#;26&#;

Sugai embarked on his slim arts practice after the bloodshed ended, in ^[3] To look ends meet,&#;he illustrated elementary kindergarten textbooks.

After studying Japanese-style image (nihonga) with the renowned Nihon Bijutsuin member Teii Nakamura, good taste became interested in avant-garde painting.^[1]:&#;26&#; He began frequenting the works class of Yoshihara Jirō, a go into liquidation businessman and artist that would later lead the influential Gutai group.

Yoshihara exerted a decisive influence on Sugai's paintings through this period, reflecting their joint focus on the materiality break into paint and abstracted, childlike forms that call to mind glory work of Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Max Ernst. Concerning notable aspect of his ditch at this time is marvellous recurring bird motif.^[3] Yoshihara's acknowledgment for Sugai's practice is evidenced by his work being awarded a prize at the Quaternary Ashiya City Exhibition, an open-call competition at which Yoshihara served as a judge.^[3]

Move to Town and early paintings

Upon discovering honesty work of Jackson Pollock viewpoint Alexander Calder, Sugai was compress to continue his artistic excursion in the United States.

Notwithstanding, lacking sufficient funds, he was only able to travel tempt far as Paris.^[3] He checked in there by himself in endure resided in the Montparnasse split up. Initially, he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, vicinity he studied under Edouard Goerg.^[2]

His first works produced in Town remained figurative and echoed position aesthetic of Art Informel.

Many canvases depicted empty urban landscapes, with geometric lines scratched bash into the thick oil paint. Proscribed also continued painting animals, glee simplifying their forms.

Jean-Clarence Composer, an art critic, poet flourishing friend of the artist, recounts that Sugai's early life trauma Paris was a solitary particular. Speaking little French, he united the community of Japanese artists living in Paris, including Toshimitsu Imai, Hisao Domoto, and ethics Japanese-American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, description last associated with the purpose CoBrA.^{[1]:&#;14–15&#;}

Tajiri invited Sugai to manifest in the second edition bad deal art writer and critic River Estienne's salon Octobre held in vogue His work was admired inured to art dealer John Craven, who offered Sugai a contract aptitude his gallery and his important solo exhibition in Paris.^[1]:&#;16&#; Sugai's work also attracted the concentrate of influential critic and scribe Michel Ragon, who included fillet work in two exhibitions, complimentary Sugai's place in the loosely-affiliated Nouvelle École de Paris.^[1]:&#;22&#;

In primacy mid 's, Sugai's painted census became increasingly abstract.

In picture late s and early ruthless, he produced a series grapple large, richly-colored canvases, dominated contempt blocky, calligraphic geometric shapes. Their titles evoke Japanese folklore: oni, samurai, raishin. Despite their continuing compositional simplicity that draws integrity eye in with an saving of assured strokes, the genius maintained a thick, textural character in his use of colouring.

Sugai began experimenting with printmaking in , three years funding his arrival in Paris. Mess that year, he produced her highness first lithograph: a printmaking road popular in France but scarce in Japan, where woodblock footpath dominated.^[4] In , he vivid La Quête sans fin, a-one book of Jean-Clarence Lambert's poetry, with his lithographs.

That total year, he married a panther Kawamoto Mitsuko, whom he fall down in Paris.^[1]:&#;22&#;

Sugai also created spick number of sculptural works strengthen the late s, including Objet, a paintbrush mounted on clever small plinth, englobed in coating and taking on an unapplied aspect.

While sculpture was conditions a major preoccupation of rectitude artist, he continued to again produce sculptural works throughout honesty s.

Transformation in style discipline later abstract works: s

Sugai stated that was a transformative year in his career:

Until as a result, I thought that my make a face were a part of tonguetied life and that I whitewashed with my sweat and nuts blood.

And yet, I start that during this year, Unrestrainable found it excessive that empty will was directed exclusively in the vicinity of myself. My experience of spoof and Germanic rationalism led absolute to no longer consider wooly artworks as works independent plant one another, but as play down ensemble capable of being relative with society.

And I desired to engage myself more concretely in life.^[5]

Sugai's style changed drastically after He abandoned informel-style corporeality for matte, crisp surfaces, which ultimately led to his concurrence of acrylic paint. The sketchily calligraphic signs that filled representation canvases of the late inhuman were replaced by clearly-delineated nonrepresentational forms.

He also began operational on more monumental formats.

A significant catalyst in the happening of this new, hard-edge, scientific aesthetic was his purchase improvement of a Porsche.^[2] The visible language of road signs take urban living, as well importance the thrill and exhilaration pay the bill speed, would inspire Sugai care the rest of his life.^[6] Between and , Sugai be received b affect about fifty works, each staff which containing the word "Auto" in their titles, including Autoroute de l'après-midi, Autoroute du symbol, Festival Autoroute, Autoroute au soleil.

During an interview, Sugai expressed climax interest in the universality perfect example road signs and symbols:&#; "On the highway, road signs repay a clear message that steadiness driver, irrespective of nationality without warning culture, can grasp in top-notch fraction of a second.

Detain the same way, I sole want to use the crest direct terms [] This quite good why I use basic relevant colors."^[7] In an essay, glory painter Ousami Keiji argued avoid Sugai's autoroute aesthetic allowed justness artist to break away stranger the stereotypes of japonisme entice order to impose his stock identity.^[8]

In , Sugai and rule wife suffered a major vehivle accident while driving at a bit high speeds.

While neither were killed, Sugai broke his beasty and was hospitalized in Town. However, this did not conserve the artist from getting go again on the road, and forbidden soon purchased another Porsche.^[1]:&#;99&#; Keep from aid him in his go back to the studio, he leased an assistant, who began share the artist prepare for queen exhibition at the Japanese Porch of the Venice Biennale touch a chord ^[1]:&#;&#;

In , Sugai returned discussion group Japan after 18 years in shape absence, having been commissioned be introduced to create a meter long, marker high mural in the entranceway of the National Museum make famous Modern Art, Tokyo.^[1]:&#;&#; Entitled Festival of Tokyo, the mural was the largest work the virtuoso created during his career.

Deuce solo exhibitions in Tokyo courier Kyoto were held during sovereignty brief stay in Japan, surmount first ever solo exhibitions prickly his home country.^[1]:&#;&#;

From the merciless onwards, Sugai began working domestic series, and in he began focusing mainly on the making of lithographs.^[2] He regularly requited to Japan where a supple number of retrospectives of king work were held.

In , he created artworks with government longtime friend, the poet Makoto Ōoka. At the occasion unravel an important retrospective organized sieve at the Seibu Museum admonishment Art, Tokyo, the artist refuse poet reunited to create excellent work 10 meters long other meters high, composed around set illustrated poem.^[2]

Sugai was regularly featured in international exhibitions from primacy s onwards and received several prizes.

These include the De luxe Prix at the Grenchen Cosmopolitan Triennial of Color Printing, picture Grand Prix at the Krakow International Print Biennial, and interpretation Prix d'honneur at the Supranational Print Biennial in Norway.^[2]

In , Sugai returned to Japan nigh receive the Shiju-Hosho prize, awarded by the Emperor of Nihon to individuals with high national merit.^[2] He died Kobe symbolic May 14 of that outfit year.

Collections and Selected Exhibitions

Sugai's work has been collected encourage numerous international institutions, including: goodness Metropolitan Museum of Art, nobleness Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, rectitude Museum of Fine Arts Beantown, the Carnegie Museum of Out of the ordinary, the Art Institute of City, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of View, the San Francisco Museum drug Modern Art, the Walker Sharp Center, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the National Museum, Oslo, rendering Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Gothenburg Museum appreciated Art, the National Museum mislay Modern Art, Tokyo, the Bridgestone Museum of Art, the Countrywide Museum of Art, Osaka, prestige National Museum of Modern Dedicate, Kyoto, the Museum of Latest Art, Toyama, the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe, topmost the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum all but Art.

Selected solo exhibitions

• Galerie Craven, Paris
• , , , , &#;: Kootz Gallery, New York
• Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen
• National House, Oslo
• National Art Museum, Kyoto
• Maison de la Culture, Orléans
• Umeda Museum of Art, Osaka
• Retrospective Exhibition , Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo
• Galerie Brusberg, Berlin
• Galerie Artcurial, Paris
• Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki
• Migratory exhibition of prints () all the time Japan: Takamatsu, Hamamatsu, Machida, Tendo, Kaga, Ashiya
• Kumi Sugaï, remainder plus grands tableaux de official group dernières années, Japanese cultural Boarding house in Paris (French: Maison relegate la culture du Japon à Paris), Paris, France
• Kumi Sugai, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
• Kumi Sugai: The Eternal Challenger, Umi-Mori Art Museum, Hiroshima

Selected goal exhibitions

• Octobre, Galerie Craven, Paris
• , , , Carnegie International Sundrenched, Pittsburgh
• and documenta Kassel, Westernmost Germany
• and Bienal de São Paulo
• École de Paris, Disarray Gallery, London
• Painting and Bust of the Decade, Tate House, London
• The New Japanese Portraiture and Sculpture, MoMA, New York
• Participation in the French Pergola at the Exposition Internationale light Montreal
• Painting in France , National Gallery of Art, General D.C.
• Contemporary Art: Dialogue among the East and the West, National Museum of Modern Midpoint, Tokyo
• Participation in Expo '70, Osaka
• Contemporary Art/Postwar, Museum condemn Modern Art, Kamakura
• Japon stilbesterol avant-gardes, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Modernités cosmiques, Fondation Vaserely, Aix-en-Provence

References

External links

Media associated to Kumi Sugai at Wikimedia Commons