Avant Garde Asia: Gutai and Its Legacy

Avant Garde Asia: Gutai and Its Legacy is a monumental private selling exhibition of the avant garde movements in Japan.
Featuring more than 50 works, the exhibition provides an in-depth examination of early experimental Asian art form from the 1950s through to the post-millennium era, offering the most comprehensive, museum-scale retrospective of the JapaneseGutai.

Gutai represents Japan’s most influential avant-garde collective of the postwar era. Founded by artist, critic, and teacher Yoshihara Jirō, the Gutai group was legendary in its own time. Its members explored new art forms combining performance, painting, and interactive environments and created an international common ground of experimental art through the worldwide reach of their exhibition and publication activities. Over its eighteen-year existence, Gutai forged an ethics of authenticity and individualism to create a ferociously new art. Working in the cosmopolitan hamlet of Ashiya, far from Paris, New York, and even Tokyo, Gutai artists understood early on that self-representation was crucial to participating in art-world discourses. Membership in Gutai was governed entirely by its leader, Yoshihara Jirō. Following the terminology used by traditional artists’ organizations, Yoshihara conferred the status of member upon artists who met with his approval and published member lists in the Gutai journal. In addition to Yoshihara members of the Gutai group included Shimamoto Shōzō, Takesada Matsutani, Sadamasa Motonaga, Atsuko Tanaka, Akira Kanayama, Muramaki Saburō and others.