March 2012
28 posts
Takesada Matsutani
Another post with work of Takesada Matsutani… This time a few of his sketches.
Simple shapes, simple in color, and so beautifully sophisticated in aesthetics.
Takesada Matsutani | Let it flow
Japanese artist Takesada Matsutani was born in Osaka 1937.
He was part of the Osaka based Gutai movement, formed by Jiro Yoshihara and 17 other Osaka-based young artists in the summer of 1954. Jiro Yoshihara was regarded their leader and composed The Gutai Art Manifesto, published in a Japanese art magazine in December 1956. :
“Let us take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antique shops… . Lock these corpses into their tombs. Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other.”
The idea was to work with the substances and allowing them to form their own shapes. Seeing the artist merely as a guide to the materials.
As Takesada Matsutani paintings became more abstract, he began experimenting with vinyl glue. Allowing the glue to drip slowly, he created stalactite-like forms on the surfaces of his canvases. He mixes graphite into the glue, making it look, almost as if, a pool of black thickened oil is dripping from the wall.
“I have always kept in mind Yoshihara’s command to be original and to honor the spirit of my materials. I feel that I have come to understand so much about graphite and glue. At the same time, I still have so much to learn about my materials. So much to learn.”
Read more: Takesada Matsutani in ‘Art in America’
Black Lips
a mood board
