It’s Day 215 and I had fun painting today’s tribute.  It’s another Gutai Group artist…which I have kind of gotten obsessed with since I discovered them.  Today I am honoring Yasuo Sumi!  It was difficult to find a long biography about him.  Below is from his website and also a biography from an italian website Spazio Arte dei Mori that I had to translate through google. 🙂  Enjoy.

Below is from Spazio Arte dei Mori.

Founded in 1954 in Osaka by Jiro Yoschihara, the Gutai movement represents one of the most interesting artistic avant-garde and the thickness of the post-war period. Forcing the boundaries of painting and sculpture, as well as lead to extreme consequences the ambivalent relationship with tradition, the Gutai movement fully captures the common feeling of the artistic moment developing in parallel, and in some cases also anticipating more Western movements: from ‘Informal Action Painting.

The artistic event invades the everyday, the crossing of genres moving painting,

calligraphy, performances, plays, improvisation, and the so-called “avant-garde under heaven” answers the common need to overcome the limitations of traditional mediums, turning to the matter and the concreteness of the artistic medium.

Yasuo Sumi (1925) is known as one of the action painters of the Gutai movement. After entering the Gutai in 1955, and have participated in all exhibitions of the movement, from the first to the twenty-first, and, later, in the Art Club directed by Taro Okamoto, Sumi is now a member of the Group AU, at which inevitably participates in exhibitions .

He was invited to exhibit at major institutions, galleries and museums Japanese and international, including: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hyogo, Osaka, Ashiya, Ciba, Galerie National du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Cultural Exchange Center, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; Turin Figurative Gallery and Turin International Aesthetic Studio, Turin; Art Center, Milan; Helsinki Art Academy, Helsinki; Design

House Rotterdam, Rotterdam; and even in Canada, England, Australia and China. He also participated in the 45. Venice Biennale, Road to the East, with the assistance of the Japan Foundation and the Italian Government.

Below is from yasuosumi.com.

My concept of art

When I create my works, my feelings are a mix of yakekuso (desperation), fumajime (absence of seriousness) and charanporan (irresponsibility). Yakekuso is for me the condition of complete spiritual freedom, in which I become free from any limit and also my ability in itself becomes infinite. Fumajime is the refusal of the past. In the human society there have always been many codes, laws and rules, from the past till now. The refusal of all those rules is nothing but the future. At last, for charanporan I mean “the return to the real human shape”. In other words, if the bonds of the society and those of the family did not exist, I think that in those conditions everything would be “charanporan”. Man by nature has a great power, and when this power is expressed with desperation, absence of seriousness and irresponsibility, it becomes the manifestation of his true form.

Yasuo Sumi

Collections and activities in Japan

After joining Gutai in 1955, Sumi becomes a member of Art Club, the group represented by Taro OKAMOTO. Both the groups have broken up later. He participated in all the Gutai exhibitions from the first to the 21st one. At the present as an AU member, he continues to show his own works at every exhibition of AU (exhibitions at Kyoto Museum, International Modern Art AU Exhibitions). Furthermore he has been invited to many exhibitions organized by public museums such as Tokyo

City Modern Art Museum, Kyoto City Modern Art Museum, Hyogo Prefecture Museum, Osaka City Modern Art Museum, Ashiya City Museum, Chiba City Art Museum, Miyagi Prefecture Art Museum, Fukuoka City Art Museum, Kitakyushu City Art Museum, Itami City Art Museum, Shibuya Art Museum… Sumi held many exhibitions even in several galleries of Tokyo, Osaka and Itami.

Overseas

Sumi has been invited to the 45th Venice Biennale (Path to the East) for two weeks. The Japan Foundation was the promoter of the project. Sumi held many exhibitions abroad,

such as Galerie National du Jeu de Paume in Paris; New York’s Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Cultural Exchange Center (personal exhibition) in US; Auckland Museum in Australia; Rome Contemporary Art Museum, Torino Figurative Gallery , Torino International Aesthetic Studio, Milan Art Center etc. in Italy; Fondazione Morra in Napoli, Rauma Art Museum, Helsinki Art Academy etc. in Finland; Rotterdam Design House etc. in Netherlands; Off Center in Canada; and finally in England, and in China… He has been invited even to many museums, studios and galleries. Plenty of his works have become property of public and national museums.

Most relevant museums

Art Museum of Hyogo Prefecture (Yamamura Collection), Art Museum of Miyagi Prefecture, North

Kyushu Art Museum, Ashiya Museum, Osaka Contemporary Art Museum, Tanabe Art Museum (Wakayama Prefecture), Itami Museum, Urawa Museum, Miyazaki Museum, Nakamoto Seishi Art Museum (Sendai), Osaka University, Itami Town Hall, Culture Institute of Itami, Itami Hospital, Itami City Hotel, New York, Paris, London, San Francisco, Torino, Calgary, Vienna, Helsinki, Toulouse, etc

~

I hope you enjoy my piece today.  I randomly poured 4 colors of paint then smashed a screen against it spreading the paint.  I then used a fork to make random patterns with the paint.  I like how it turned out. 🙂

I’ll see you tomorrow on Day 216!  Best, Linda