Although the exhibition Avant-Gardes - Japan, post-1950 is about dialogue with Western modernity, Japan's involvement with the Axis, the destruction, defeat and American trusteeship until 1951 have left their mark. These years of deprivation and reconstruction led several currents to rethink an art that was simultaneously Japanese and new, where "an individualism directly inspired by the Americans" and a look at "ancestral traditions" were expressed, as Marc David Fitoussi, curator of this exhibition, notes. Sixteen artists and forty of their works are thus brought together, whether they were part of the "colony" of painters then settled in Paris (Akira Kito, Jun'ichi Dobashi, J?saku Maeda, Key Sato, Yuzuru Shoji...) or found themselves within groups such as Gutai. Meaning "concrete" and bringing together several generations of artists in the province of Kansai, the programme of this movement founded in 1954 by Jir? Yoshihara is based on the following words: "Gutai art does not transform or divert matter, it gives it life.



Extract from the article by Domitille Alibert published in the number 100 of the magazine Art Absolument, published on 18 March 2022.