Minoru Kawabata

Minoru Kawabata (川端実, Kawabata Minoru; born on May 22, 1911, died on June 29, 2001) was a Japanese artist.[1] Kawabata is best known for his color field paintings. Between 1960 and 1981, Kawabata had 11 solo shows at the prominent Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.[2]: 102  At the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962, Kawabata’s work was exhibited in the Japan Pavilion alongside that of four other Japanese artists. Kawabata has had solo exhibitions at the Everson Museum of Art in 1974, the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura in 1975, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and Ohara Museum of Art in 1992, and Yokosuka Museum of Art in 2011.[3][4][5] Kawabata’s works are in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Artizon Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the Newark Museum of Art, Ohara Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokosuka Museum of Art, among others.

Minoru Kawabata
Born(1911-05-22)22 May 1911
Tokyo, Japan
Died29 June 2001(2001-06-29) (aged 90)
Tokyo, Japan
NationalityJapanese-American
Known forPainting
MovementAbstract expressionism, color field
Patron(s)Betty Parsons

Biography

Early life and education (1911–1941)

Kawabata was born on March 22, 1911, in Kasuga-chō, Koishikawa Ward, Tokyo.[1] His father, Moshō Kawabata, was a Japanese-style painter and his grandfather, Gyokushō Kawabata, was a master painter of the Maruyama School.[4]: 18  Despite his family's history of working in Japanese-style media, in April 1929, he enrolled in the oil painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Takeji Fujishima. One of Kawabata’s classmates was Taro Okamoto, but he left for France in the third term of his first year.[4]: 18  Kawabata graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1934, his work was selected for the Bunten exhibition in 1936, and in 1939 he became a Kōfūkai (光風会) member.[1] In August of the same year, he left for Europe. Soon after his arrival in Paris he was ordered to leave the country due to the outbreak of World War II. Initially he fled to New York, but after few months, Kawabata returned to France again. He then moved to Italy due to the escalation of the war, but when Italy also joined World War II he returned to Japan in September 1941.[1]

War painting (1941–1945)

Shortly after Kawabata's return from Europe, Japan was plunged into the Pacific War. Like many other artists, Kawabata was involved in producing war paintings. Kawabata’s war paintings were exhibited at the 1st Greater East Asian War Art Exhibition (大東亜戦争美術展) in 1942 and the 1st Army Art Exhibition (陸軍美術展) in 1943.[2]: 151  Several of Kawabata’s war paintings are in the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo on indefinite loan from the United States.[6][7]

Postwar Japan (1945–1958)

After the war, from 1950 to 1955, Kawabata became a professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo, and during this time participated in the formation of an art group known as the New Creation Society (Shinseisaku Kyōkai; 新制作協会).[1][3]: 4  In 1951, he was selected to represent Japan at the inaugural São Paulo Biennale. The notable Japanese critic Atsuo Imaizumi acclaimed Kawabata as "the first full-fledged international modern artist" produced by Japan.[3]: 4  In 1953, together with Saburo Hasegawa, Jiro Yoshihara, Takeo Yamaguchi and others, Kawabata formed the Japan Abstract Art Club (日本アブストラクト・アート・クラブ).[1] ln the 1950s he began to move away from figurative representation and to search for dynamic, abstract expression.[1]

American years (1958–1994)

In September 1958, Kawabata moved to the US and settled in New York, and the following month his Rhythm Brown (1958) received Honorable Mention at the 2nd Guggenheim International Award.[8] In 1959, Kawabata was appointed as a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.[9] Kawabata held his first New York solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1960, forming an association which has continued ever since, with almost yearly exhibitions of his work.[3]: 4  At the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962, Kawabata exhibited his works at the Japan Pavilion (commissioner: Atsuo Imaizumi) alongside that of four other artists (Kinuko Emi, Kumi Sugai, Tadashi Sugimata, and Ryōkichi Mukai).[10] At the Venice Biennale, Kawabata exhibited eight works, including Vivid Red (1961), which is characterised by calligraphic brushwork and intense colours.[10] Through the limited colour contrast of red and white, Vivid Red marked the completion of Kawabata's abstraction with powerful strokes.[11]: 126  In the 1950s, Kawabata’s work was influenced by Abstract Expressionism that swept the New York art scene at that time, but from the end of the 1960s his work developed into abstract paintings that emphasised colour fields and hard-edge geometric forms.[1] Through the 1970s, Kawabata pursued abstraction, in which colour fields overlap in clear and simplified forms, such as diamonds, ellipses and origami-like shapes.[11]: 126  The exhibition catalogue of his retrospective, held at the Everson Museum of Art in New York in 1974, interpreted: "Kawabata has consistently sought and won a powerfully individual mode of expression with lyrical color forms in space."[3]: 4  "'I was too Westernized when I was a schoolboy,' he once said, 'Now I often think of my deep tradition. Then I try to produce something that is purely mine. I fight the traditions.' This strength of purpose is evident in his work and has won the respect of noted critics both in the United States and in Japan."[3]: 4 

Later years (1994–2001)

Kawabata had a large-scale touring retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and the Ohara Museum of Art in 1992,[4] and returned to Japan in 1994, resettling in Tokyo. He died in a hospital in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on June 29, 2001, at the age of 90.[1]

Selected exhibitions[2]: 148–152 

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Major public collections[2]: 153 

Further reading
  • Everson Museum of Art, ed. Kawabata, exh. cat., Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1974.[3]
  • Harada, Osamu, and Shintani Masahiro, Nyūyōku no kawabata minoru = Kawabata in New York, Tokyo: Kōjī honpo, 1992.[9]
  • The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and Ohara Museum of Art, eds. Zaibei 35-nen kokō no kiseki: Kawabata Minoru ten = Minoru Kawabata, exh. cat., Kyoto: National Museum of Modern Art, Kurashiki: Ohara Museum of Art, 1992.[4]
  • Ono, Fuyuki, ed. Kawabata Minoru: Michiyuku kaiga = Minoru Kawabata: Form Fullness, Tokyo: Otsuka Fine Art, 2020.[2]
  • Yokosuka Museum of Art, and Kudō Kasumi, eds. Seitan 100-nen Kawabata Minoru ten: Tōkyō—nyūyōku = Minoru Kawabata, exh. cat., Yokosuka: Yokosuka Museum of Art, 2011.[5]

References
  1. "川端実 :: 東文研アーカイブデータベース". www.tobunken.go.jp. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  2. Ono, Fuyuki, ed. (2020). Kawabata Minoru: Michiyuku kaiga = Minoru Kawabata: Form Fullness. Tokyo: Otsuka Fine Art.
  3. Everson Museum of Art, ed. (1974). Kawabata. Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art.
  4. The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Ohara Museum of Art, eds. (1992). Zaibei 35-nen kokō no kiseki: Kawabata Minoru ten = Minoru Kawabata. Kyoto and Kurashiki: National Museum of Modern Art and Ohara Museum of Art.
  5. Yokosuka Museum of Art; Kudō, Kasumi, eds. (2011). Seitan 100-nen Kawabata Minoru ten: Tōkyō—nyūyōku = Minoru Kawabata. Yokosuka: Yokosuka Museum of Art.
  6. "独立行政法人国立美術館・所蔵作品検索". search.artmuseums.go.jp. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  7. "独立行政法人国立美術館・所蔵作品検索". search.artmuseums.go.jp. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  8. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, ed. (1958). Guggenheim International Award 1958. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
  9. Harada, Osamu; Shintani, Masahiro (1992). Nyūyōku no kawabata minoru = Kawabata in New York. Tokyo: Kōjī honpo.
  10. "31st La Biennale di Venezia International Art Exhibition". The Japan Pavilion Official Website - La Biennale di Venezia. Retrieved 2022-08-27.
  11. The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; The Museum of Art, Ehime, eds. (2001). Aru korekutā ga mita sengo nihon bijutsu = Through a Collector's Eye: Japanese Art after 1945. Translated by Anderson, Stanley N. Gunma and Ehime: The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Art.
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