Lot 24

Domoto Hisao was at the forefront of abstract art, becoming involved with the Art Informel movement; a group of European artists with concerns similar to those of the Gutai in Japan, namely a conviction that in painting the substance and physicality of paint itself conveys energy and meaning. In 1957 there was an exhibition organised by the influential French art critic Michael Tapié entitled L’art mondial contemporain à Tokyo, and Domoto introduced Tapié to the Gutai movement at this time. In 1958 he was in an exhibition of Art Informel and Gutai artists called The International Art of a New Era: USA, Japan, Europe held at the Osaka International Art Festival. Domoto was born in Kyoto to a family of artists and connoisseurs. His father collected traditional Japanese ceramics, calligraphy and painting, and his uncle, the painter Domoto Insho (1891-1975), won the Order of Cultural Merit in 1961. In 1952 Domoto Hisao travelled with his uncle to France, Italy and Spain and in 1954 he moved to Paris where he lived until returning to Japan in 1965. He spent December 1958 and January 1959 in New York where he met many artists including Jasper Johns (b. 1939) and Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008).

Domoto Hisao (1928-2013)

Untitled

Details

Domoto Hisao (1928-2013)
Untitled
Signed to upper right Domoto
Signed to the reverse in Japanese Domoto Hisao and in Roman script Domoto Paris 1959-39
Painted in 1959
Oil on canvas
50.3 x 150 cm.

Lot Essay

This 1959 work, executed during Domoto’s period in Paris, clearly demonstrates the painterly abstraction central to Art Informel.
Domoto has had numerous solo exhibitions including those at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York in 1959, 1967 and 1971, at Minami Gallery, Tokyo in 1960, 1968, 1972, 1975 and 1978. In 1979 a solo exhibition of his work entitled Hisao Domoto was held at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris and he had retrospective exhibitions at Ikebukuro Seibu Museum, Tokyo (1987), The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo (both 2005).

Examples of Domoto’s work of this period are in many museum collections including:
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (go to https://search.artmuseums.go.jp/search_e/records.php?sakuhin=156380)
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (go to https://search.artmuseums.go.jp/search_e/records.php?sakuhin=4426)
The National Museum of Art, Osaka (go to https://search.artmuseums.go.jp/search_e/records.php?sakuhin=50033)

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