Art Basel Hong Kong 2022

NUKAGA GALLERY is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel Hong Kong 2022. We are exhibiting artworks by two prominent Japanese artists from the postwar period, Yuki Katsura and Atsuko Tanaka. From the 1940s to 1960s, artists sought new forms of artistic expression in the wake of the devastation following World War II. The postwar period saw a major shift in values and lifestyles which led to a dynamic art movement in many countries co-instantaneously, whilst Europe was previously the center of art, such as abstract expressionism in the United States, pop art that skillfully incorporated popular culture, and minimalism in contrast. In Japan as well, unique and diverse art was born in tandem with these global movements. Our gallery has been putting effort in reevaluating especially the female artists who have been underrated even in such time, although they were creating avant-garde and unique artworks.

Yuki Katsura, born in 1913, used collages, caricatures, and finely detailed paintings to depict herself and the society during the drastic change from prewar to postwar, always with a critical perspective and humorous expressions. The collage works that she began at the age of 17 in 1930, was one of the earliest collage examples in Japan, and she also participated in the Nika Kyushitsu-kai (one of the earliest avant-garde art groups in Japan) as the founder in 1938. Thusly, Katsura was already working as an artist before the war, and we can say she is the pioneer of avant-garde art in Japan. Furthermore, she stayed in Europe, America and Africa for five years since 1956, and was influenced by the experience of creating works, whilst engaging with the local people around the world. She is one of the artists whose works and career are reevaluating today; celebrating the centennial of Katsura’s birthday a large retrospective exhibition was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (then toured Shimonoseki City Art Museum) and is also collected in national museums not just in Japan but in other Asian countries.

Atsuko Tanaka, born in 1932, joined the Gutai Group in 1955 established by Jiro Yoshihara. Known for being the icon of the Gutai member, she had a liberal mind breaking stereotypes of its time through artworks, such as a sound installation called “Work (Bell)” and wearable sculpture called “Electric Dress”, assumed to be worn on stage. Tanaka’s works were highly praised especially by a French art critic, Michel Tapié, who held relationships with Gutai Group at that time, and in 1965, one of her works exhibited at a tour exhibition of seven museums in the United States became part of the collection for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In recent years, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo held a large retrospective exhibition in 2011, which then toured to the United Kingdom and Spain, and is getting attraction also from countries outside Japan.

An artist who was given the spotlight before the war, Katsura, and an artist who was globally known after the war, Tanaka. During times when women had disadvantages in making their career as an artist, these two female artists refused to accommodate against power and sought their style of expression. Furthermore, introducing their global sensitivity, gained through their oversea experiences of creating, exhibiting, and interacting with worldwide artist, into the art scene in Japan at that time is one of their successes that needs to be praised once again.

We hope you will enjoy these rich expressions by these two artists in our exhibition at Art Basel Hong Kong 2022.

★More Information ⇒ https://www.artbasel.com/hong-kong