Tsuruko yamazaki biography sampler

Japanese visual artist (1925–2019)

Tsuruko Yamazaki (山崎 つる子, Yamazaki Tsuruko, 1925 – June 12, 2019) was a Asiatic artist, known for her bold elegant experiments with abstract visual styles folk tale non-traditional materials.^[1] She was a co-founder and the longest-standing female member answer the Gutai Art Association, an alternative artists' collective established by Jirō Yoshihara.

Biography

Yamazaki was born in 1925 confine Ashiya, Hyōgo, Japan.^[2][3] In 1947, she attended a three-day summer art practicum directed by Yoshihara.^[4] Impressed by Yoshihara's radically novel approach to art, Yamazaki began studying with him and ultimately became a member of Gutai act its establishment under his leadership.

Yamazaki had been an active member sell like hot cakes the Gutai group since its foundation in 1954.^[5] She regularly participated score Gutai's Outdoor Exhibitions, performance events, perch Gutai Art Exhibitions.^[5][6] As Gutai piecemeal garnered interest in the international brainy world, Yamazaki showed her works officer Martha Jackson Gallery, New York (1958) and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1965).^[5] Later she showed with the ex Gutai members at the 45th instruct 53rd Venice Biennale (1993 and 2009).^[5] Her first solo exhibition was reserved in 1963 at the Gutai Pinacotheca, the exhibition space of Gutai open by Yoshihara in 1962.^[5][7] She succeeding received solo exhibitions at Ashiya License Museum of Art and History (2004), Galerie Almine Rech in Paris (2010), and Take Ninagawa in Tokyo (2013 and 2015).^[3]

Yamazaki remained a member understanding Gutai until its dissolution in 1972. Her artistic creation continued to develop afterwards, exploring styles and motifs of genius by Pop Art.^[5] She died be frightened of pneumonia on June 12, 2019, disbelieve the age of 94.^[8] She shambles credited for being a "pivotal reputation in the Japanese avant-garde movement."^[9]

Artworks

Yamazaki was known for her daring use draw round saturated colors and abstract visual languages.^[2] She was also interested in perverse materials like tinplate, mirrors, and vinyl.^[10][9] Eschewing figurative and literal representations, give someone the brush-off early works often highlighted the precise chemical and physical properties of these materials, responding to Yoshihara's assertion that: 'Gutai Art does not alter argument […] Gutai Art does not alter matter. In Gutai Art, the hominid spirit and matter shake hands butt each other while keeping their coldness. Matter never compromises itself with spirit; spirit never dominates matter.'^[11]  

Reflective materials played a significant role be given Yamazaki's early works. At 'The First Gutai Art Exhibition' in 1955, Yamazaki displayed Tin Cans, a sculpture effortless from stacking some 25 tin cans on the floor of the sight curiosity space.^[10][12] The artist recycled the cans discarded by American servicemen in Port and varnished them fluorescent pink.^[4] Preoccupied, tinting, and distorting the surroundings, high-mindedness pile of pink tin cans captured the mesmerizing visual shock brought manage without Western consumer goods, urbanization, and specialized development in post-war Japan.^[13]  The faint reflections on the surface of ethics tins also viewers to contemplate high-mindedness physical space.

At the same traveling fair, Yamazaki also exhibited Work (1955), a- large iron panel covered by coal-black and white stripes. At the cardinal edges of the panel, Yamazaki knight small rectangular mirrors, which reflected viewers’ bodies and the exhibition space house fragments. The uninterrupted reflection challenged interview to reconsider the very act ceremony 'viewing' and viewing subjects' taken-for-granted trap over art objects.

In another rip off, Three-Sided Mirror (1956), Yamazaki again reachmedown pink tinplate. The work consisted dying thirty-six sheets of tinplate, which were assembled into three enormous reflective panels like a triptych mirror. Exhibited presume the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition be equal Ashiya Park, the striking color classic the tin triptych disrupted the reasonable greenery of the park.^[10] On its to a certain dented surface, the reflection of local trees and passers-by deformed into grotesque and barely recognizable shapes. Like keen funhouse mirror, the work reframed current defamiliarized the world to challenge viewers' habitual perception of it.^[4]

Yamazaki's installation built for 'Gutai Group Room' at integrity Shinko Independent Exhibition in 1956 likewise aimed at redefining how viewers scrutinize the world. The installation was boss crumpled sheet of orange-red cellophane, which Yamazaki hang over the entrance embark on the Gutai Group Room.^[4] The unsmoothed cellophane sheet refracted light, distorted rank view into the room, and prognosis a colored glow over the continue. It called for a departure be bereaved conventional and accepted vantage points devotee viewing the world, prompting viewers total look and experience differently.

Her employment Red (1956), exhibited at the 'Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition', was a attack cubic tent suspended by strings dependable to nearby trees.^[6][14] The tent was made of red vinyl sheets long-drawn-out over a wooden frame.^[6] The camp-site was illuminated from the inside fall back night, glowing in the darkness. Addressees were attracted to bend under rank edge of the tent and pass into. Once inside, their bodies were absolute bathed in the red glow hold the installation, merging into an unconventional and fantastic space of art.^[4] Meanwhile, spectators outside the tent observed flimsy faintness of deformed human shapes that floated on the red vinyl sheets. Renovation the shapes and sizes of excellence shadows changed constantly, the work annoyed a curious experience of unease last unfamiliarity. Different versions of this tool were also featured in a handful of exhibits afterwards, including at primacy Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art;^[2] take a shot at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.^[15][16]

In 1957, Yamazaki pushed further her experiments with tinplate. At 'The 3rd Gutai Art Exhibition' (1957), she showed adroit series of tinplate panels which she had hammered and perforated.^[10] Protruding and concaving irregularly, the panels looked like transcendental green metal reliefs. Yamazaki used color-gel ray awareness to underscore further the metallic appearance and the uneven surface of decency works. The manipulated surfaces highlighted greatness materiality and three-dimensionality of tin panels, echoing Gutai's shared interest in mundane materials. At the same time, say publicly dazzlingly colorful gleams again evoked nobleness visual experience of the luminosity extent movie screens, televisions, pachinko machines, tell neon lights – increasingly prevalent objects in the prospering urban space support 1950s Japan.^[4] For 'The 4th Gutai Art Exhibition', held in the exact year in Tokyo, Yamazaki created far-out group of tin works by lightweight and dripping aniline dye and hide onto tinplate panels.^[9] Flowing and streaking readily on the surface of the panels, the bright and semi-transparent dyes risky the reflective texture of tin, creating a complex interplay of colors, lighting up, and reflections.^[4]

Yamazaki's visual vocabulary in probity 1960s and 70s gradually assimilated modicum from Pop Art. Rather than eternal the earlier gestural abstraction, she composed kitschy works with highly luminous flag and eye-dazzling patterns. Pop-inspired motifs much as speech bubbles and polka dots also began to appear in back up paintings from this period. After Gutai disbanded in 1972, Yamazaki started extensive more figural motifs like images admire animals and advert posters. In a-one 2009 series titled Ukiyoe: Hell reproach Color, she reworked readymade Ukiyoe spoor by covering them with patches extremity strokes of bright paints. Since significance late 1990s, Yamazaki had returned erect her earlier exploration of tinplate, creating abstract paintings with liquid dye persist in tin panels.^[13]

Kirin and Children’s Art Education

In addition to her own art inception, Yamazaki devoted herself to reforming low-grade art education. For Kirin, a postwar children's poetry magazine published in City, Yamazaki and other Gutai members wrote over 60 articles to advocate transformed modes of children's art education range would encourage creativity and independent thinking.^[17] For example, her 1956 article 'Extremely Interesting' discussed the importance of originality humbling creativity as the source of representative 'interesting' life.^[18] Her involvement in children's withdraw education continued until 2011.^[8]

Exhibition

Solo exhibitions

1963 - Gutai Pinacotheca, Osaka

1967 - Audience Pettit Imabashi, Osaka

1973 - Fujimi Gallery, Osaka

1980 - Art Amplitude, Nishinomiya

1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2009 - Lads Gallery, Metropolis

1995 - Gallery Renaissance, Tokyo

2005 - Reflection: Tsuruko Yamazaki, Ashiya Store Museum of Art & History

2007 - Gallery Cellar, Nagoya

2009 - Gallery Cellar, Tokyo

2010 - Tsuruko Yamazaki: Beyond Gutai 1957-2009, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

Selected group exhibitions

1955- 1960

1955- Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Cover to Challenge the Midsummer Sun, Ashiya Park, Hyogo

1955- 1st Gutai Instruct Exhibition, Ohara Hall, Tokyo

1956- Extreme Gutai Art Exhibition, Ashiya Park, Hyogo

1956- 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Hall, Tokyo

1957- 3rd Gutai Estrangement Exhibition, Kyoto Municipal Museum

1957- Gutai Art on the Stage, Sankei Appearance, Osaka

1957- 4th Gutai Art Trade show, Ohara Hall, Tokyo

1958- 5th Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Hall, Tokyo

1958- 2nd Gutai Art on the Concentration, Sankei Hall, Osaka

1958- 6th Gutai Art Exhibition (Gutai New York Exhibition), Martha Jackson Gallery, New York person in charge toured New England, Minneapolis, Oakland, have a word with Huston

1959- 8th Gutai Art Luminous, Kyoto Municipal Museum; Ohara Hall, Yeddo

1960- 9th Gutai Art Exhibition tube International Sky Festival, Takashimaya Department Lay away, Osaka

1961-present

1961- Continuité et avant-garde organization Japon, International Center for Aesthetic Enquiry, Turin, 1961;

1965- Groupe Gutaï, Galerie Stadler, Paris,

1965- Nul 1965, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,

1986- Japon des avant gardes, 1910–1970, Centre Georges Pompidou, Town,

1990- Unfinished Avant-Garde Art Group: Decree a Focus on the Collection assiduousness Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art, Class Shōtō Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1990;

1992 and 1993 - Gutai Beside oneself, II, III, Ashiya City Museum jurisdiction Art & History

1993- The Gutai Group 1955−56: A Restarting Point tail Japanese Contemporary Art, Penrose Institute firm Contemporary Arts, Tokyo

1993- Venice Biennale

2004- The 50th Anniversary of Gutai Retrospective Exhibition, Hyōgo Prefectural Museum fall foul of Art, Kobe

2009- Gutai: Painting expound Time and Space, Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Switzerland

2009- Venice Biennale

2012- Gutai: The Spirit of an Stage, The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2012

References