Saburo Murakami 30th anniversary: UNLIMITED WORLD, A special exhibition at Ashiya City Museum
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To honor the 30th anniversary of Saburo Murakami, the Ashiya City Museum is presenting a retrospective exhibition on the artist's life and work.
Saburo Murakami, UNLIMITED WORLD
December 4, 2021 until February 6, 2022
Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
Japan, 〒659-0052 Hyogo, Ashiya, Isecho, 12−25 芦屋市立美術博物館
Saburo Murakami (1925-1996), known as a central member of the Gutai Art Association ("Gutai"), presented a work that penetrates Hatron paper by the body, commonly known as "Paper Break", at the first Concrete Art Exhibition in 1955. Since then, this paperbreaking work has become synonymous with Murakami. From the 1950s to the 1960s, he presented large tableau and other objects with intense strokes, along with works with performance elements, and pursued expression in flat works. After the dissolution of "Gutai", Murakami presented works with unique performance elements. When Murakami was introduced, he was often talked about on the front page as a member of "Gutai", but in the Murakami Saburo exhibition held at the museum in 1996, we dismantled the framework of "Gutai" and approached the world of "Saburo Murakami" as a writer and a person.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Saburo Murakami's history exhibition and Saburo Murakami's journey. In this record year, Saburo Murakami exhibition will be held again. Murakami studied under Tsutsuro Ito in 1949 and continued to present at the New Production Association. While exhibiting portraits and landscape paintings at the exhibition, it gradually shifted to abstract expression. This is largely due to the activities of the "Jankai" where the association's young artists gathered and the young artists group "0 Association" aiming for cutting-art art, and I think that knowing the activities on the eve of joining "Gutai" will reaffirm Murakami's thinking about "painting". In addition, looking back on the activities of art education for children who have been involved for the rest of their lives since around 1950 will also touch the source of Murakami's ideas, which have always been free and fresh creative acts. In this exhibition, along with representative works of "Gutai" and solo exhibitions in the 1970s, we will exhibit works from the era of the New Production Association, which had been rarely introduced until now. At the same time, along with the exhibition of materials from Paper Breaking, we will introduce about 50 years of activities from various angles, including notes and related materials for unpublished works, documentary photographs, and video materials.
This exhibition attempts to establish a new statue of Saburo Murakami while touching on the other foundations that form Saburo Murakami, introducing Murakami's activities over about 50 years in four chapters. About 50 works and about 100 materials will be exhibited in one place.
For more information, visit https://ashiya-museum.jp/exhibition
