Yoshimi Arts is pleased to announce that we are holding “Shigeru Izumi - Collection”.

Born in Osaka, Izumi had started his career as a painter. Right after the war in 1951, he set up the avant-garde art group “Democratic Artists Association” together with Ei-Q and other artists, and energetically promoted activities as its leading member. It is around this time when he began to work on engravings. He received the Newcomer’s Award at the 1st International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo, emerging head and shoulders as an artist in Japan. From 1959, he spent about a decade in New York and Paris, and built up his own style of expression, strongly influenced by the western art scene of the time. After returning to Japan, he continued his creative activities until his later years focused on his painting and engraving techniques. He was also appointed as a professor at the Osaka University of Arts and had nurtured and produced many artists since then, significantly contributing to the maturation of the contemporary art scene in the Kansai region in the latter half of the 20th century.

In this year, a his 1960s work was exhibited in a exhibition "Tectonic Shifts in Printing, Printmaking and Graphic Design 1957–1979" at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in June, and Itami City Museum held his retrospective "Shigeru Izumi in the 1950s, The Sun Also Rises" from June to July. They consisted of works from the 50s and early 60s and we think many of you have seen it. Although Izumi has produced a variety of works, in this exhibition, we will introduce his oil paintings during his time in France, where he lived from 1963, and oil and acrylic paintings that he worked on after returning to Japan in 1968.

We look forward to your visit to our gallery.