Kazuo Shiraga

Kazuo Shiraga (白髪 一雄) 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.

Born in 1924 as the first son of a family of kimono fabric merchants in Amagasaki, Shiraga grew up in a refined environment, in which arts like oil painting as well as traditional Japanese performing arts and Chinese classic literature were cultivated.

Although he was interested in oil painting, Shiraga began studying Nihonga (traditional Japanese painting) in 1942 at the Kyoto City Special School of Painting (now Kyoto City University of Arts), which at that time only offered studies in Nihonga or design.

Shiraga’s studies were interrupted when he was drafted by the Japanese army in 1944.

He resumed his studies in 1945 after the end of World War II.

In 1946 Shiraga remained bedridden for several months after contracting pneumonia associated with rheumatic fever.

During this time, he engaged with writings by the art critic Usaburō Toyama.

In 1948, Shiraga married Fujiko Uemura, who eventually became an artist of her own, but who also committed herself to assisting her husband’s artistic production.

In the same year, Shiraga graduated from the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting and finally began studying oil painting at the Art School of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art as well as with the painter Tsugurō Itō.

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.

At Itō’s recommendation, Shiraga joined the Shinseisaku Kyōkai (New Production Association) and showed his works in the association’s exhibitions in Tokyo and in the Kansai region until 1952.

Shiraga also attended the meetings of the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group), founded in 1952 by artists such as Jirō Yoshihara and Kokuta Suda to provide an open forum for cross-genre exchange for artists from the Kansai region.

In 1952, Shiraga co-founded Zero-kai (Zero Society) with Akira Kanayama and Saburo Murakami, all members of the Shinseisaku Kyōkai, who were later joined by Atsuko Tanaka.

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.

He held a two-person show with Murakami in 1954.

It was at this time that Shiraga created his first “foot paintings”, for which the artist used his feet to spread oil paint on canvasses placed horizontally on the floor.

In April 1955, Shiraga, Murakami, Kanayama and Tanaka quit Zero-kai and joined the Gutai Art Association, founded a few months earlier under the leadership of Jirō Yoshihara.

Besides a great number of foot paintings, Shiraga created objects, performances, and installation artworks, particularly in the context of Gutai events, such as Red Logs (commonly also known as Please Come In) at the Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun, Challenging Mud at the First Gutai Art Exhibition in 1955, and the Ultramodern Sanbaso performance at the Gutai Art on the Stage event in 1957.

When Gutai began collaborating with the influential French art critic Michel Tapié, a promoter of European Informel art, in 1957, Shiraga, along with Yoshihara, Tanaka, and Sadamasa Motonaga, became one of the Gutai artists whom Tapié promoted and made contracts with.

Fueled by Tapié’s engagement, Shiraga’s works were increasingly included in group exhibitions beyond the Gutai context, both in Europe and in Japan.

In 1959, Shiraga’s works were shown in the exhibition Fifteen Japanese Contemporary Artists Recommended by Tapié at Gendai Gallery in Tokyo, at the XI Premio Lissone internationale per la pittura in Italy, and at the Métamorphismes at Galerie Stadler in Paris.

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.

In 1960, Shiraga was selected to contribute to the 4th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, a major biennial exhibition.

In the mid-1960s, Shiraga began to explore new colors and methods for his paintings, shifting from foot-painting to the use of tools such as wooden ski-like boards to spread the paint.

Although his national and international recognition as a solo artist grew, Shiraga continued to contribute to Gutai’s projects such as International Sky Festival in 1960, the group’s participation in exhibitions by the German and Dutch artist groups Zero and NUL, such as NUL 1965, and the Expo ‘70 in Osaka, until the dissolution of Gutai in 1972.

In 1962, Shiraga held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Stadler, Paris, followed by another at the Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka.

In 1971 Shiraga entered the Tendai sect’s priesthood at the Enryaku-ji temple on Mount Hiei and committed himself to Buddhist training in Mikkyō (Esoteric Buddhism).

Shiraga continued to participate in most of Gutai’s projects and exhibitions until the group’s dissolution following Yoshihara’s death in 1972.

Shiraga ceased to paint while training and resumed regular painting activities after his ordination in 1974.

Shiraga meditated before painting and prayed/invoked to Fūdo Myōo.

In the years following his ordination and Gutai’s dissolution, Shiraga’s works continued to be included in group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Japan, as well as in solo exhibitions in galleries in the Kansai region.

As one of the seminal members of Gutai, his works were presented from the 1980s onwards in an increasing number of major survey exhibitions of postwar Japanese art and Gutai retrospectives, including Japon des avant-gardes 1910–70 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1986, at the occasion of which Shiraga travelled to Europe for the first time.

Shiraga’s first solo exhibition at a major museum took place in 1985 at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art.

He was awarded the Hyogo Prefectural Cultural Prize in 1987, the Distinguished Service Medal for Culture in 2001, and the Osaka Art Prize in 2002.

Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at the Amagasaki Cultural Center in 1989 and at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in 2001.

Shiraga died at his home in Amagasaki on April 8, 2008, of sepsis.