KANO MITSUO

• KANO MITSUO was born in Tokyo in 1933. He began experimenting with copperplate printmaking on his own after accidentally coming across a book on printmaking techniques, starting in the mid-1950s. He began exhibiting his works from that time. In the 1960s, he participated in numerous international exhibitions such as the Ljubljana International Print Biennial and the Tokyo International Print Biennial, receiving high praise early on.

• relevant artists

  • NAKANISHI NATSUYUKI

    NAKANISHI NATSUYUKI, Japanese avant-garde and contemporary artist. Professor emeritus at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he began his highly acclaimed "Rhyme" series of abstract paintings using enamel and sand around 1959. With TAKAMATSU JIRO and AKASEGAWA GENPEI, he formed the "Hi-Red Center" (High, Red, and Middle). In his early years, he produced works with strong material elements, such as "Rhyme," a painting using sand, a series of welded scrap pieces, and compact objects made of acrylic resin that encapsulated things around him, and after the 1960s, many of his works, such as "Right Triangles" and "Stone Kicking at the Top of a Mountain," were geometric and strongly reflected a sense of physicality. From the late 1960s he began to focus on the production of "paintings," and especially from the 1970s produced two-dimensional oil paintings based on colors such as white, purple, and yellowish green. He produced a number of works with a strong thought-provoking quality, focusing on the tension between the artist and the real space.