Artist profile
Kazuo Shiraga
In October 1955 at the first Gutai exhibition in Tokyo Kazuo Shiraga enacted his renowned performance, ‘Challenging Mud’. It involved him wrestling with a truckload of clay mixed with cement that had been emptied into the courtyard of the exhibition venue. The performance, which he repeated three times during the course of the exhibition, survives only in the form of photographs and film footage. At the time of the Gutai exhibition Shiraga had already started to paint with his feet. This substitution of the human body for the paintbrush was totally revolutionary.
Shiraga was justly famous as the only important artist in the world to paint with his feet. In actuality he painted not just with his feet but with his whole body, an approach he discovered through his engagement with clay. While anybody could have thought of working in this way, we are indebted to Shiraga for having done so in such a compelling and dramatic manner.
In about 1964 Shiraga started to use wooden boards to paint with. The resulting fan-shaped works were charged with a sense of speed and centrifugal energy different from but no less powerful than the dynamism of his feet paintings. He adopted this method as a way forwards from what he felt to be the staleness creeping into his work.
Biography
- 1924
- Born in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture
- 1942–48
- Attended Kyoto Municipal School of Painting where he was given no option but to study traditional Japanese-style painting
- 1948
- Attended City Art Centre, Osaka where he studied the fundamentals of oil painting and joined the New Creation Art Association
- 1952
- Formed the 'Zero' group with Saburo Murakami and Akira Kanayama
- 1955
- Zero group merges with the Gutai Art Association. The 'Gutai Group' as it became known, exhibited both in Japan and internationally until its dissolution in 1972
- 1965
- Awarded the Amagasaki Citizen's Cultural Prize
- 1971
- Entered the Buddhist priesthood at the Enryaku Temple, Mount Hiei
- 1987
- Awarded the Hyogo Prefectural Culture Prize for Excellence
- 1999
- Awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for Culture
- 2002
- Awarded the Art Prize of Osaka City
- 2008
- Died in Japan
Selected exhibitions
- 2020
- Kazuo Shiraga: A Retrospective, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo
- 2009
- Kazuo Shiraga: Painting Born Out of Fighting, Azumino Municipal Museum of Modern Art, Toyoshina; also traveled to: Amagasaki Cultural Center, Amagasaki; Yokosuka Museum of Art, Yokosuka; Hekinan Museum of Contemporary Art, Hekinan
- 2007
- Kazuo Shiraga: Paintings and Watercolours 1954-2007, Annely Juda Fine Art, London
- 2004
- Kazuo Shiraga zum 80. Geburtstag- Bilder, Galerie Georg Nothelfer, Berlin
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