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Lot Essay
Yamada Masaaki was an abstract painter who moved from producing Cubist still lifes to pure abstraction in the late 1940s-1950s. He then moved to depicting stripes during the late 1950s and 1960s, followed by "juxtaposed rectangles".
"After 1970, I started painting grids, turning my eyes to the painting's layered space. The lines, as they were being drawn, became forms; and the colours, while restricting each other, amplified the layered space of the painting."1
For a similar larger work also painted in 1987 in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, go to https://search.artmuseums.go.jp/search_e/records.php?sakuhin=5114
1. Statement by the Artist in 1975, originally published in XIX Bienal de Sao Paolo, exh. cat. (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1987), reprinted in Alexandra Monroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, exhibition cat. (New York, 1994), p. 379
"After 1970, I started painting grids, turning my eyes to the painting's layered space. The lines, as they were being drawn, became forms; and the colours, while restricting each other, amplified the layered space of the painting."1
For a similar larger work also painted in 1987 in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, go to https://search.artmuseums.go.jp/search_e/records.php?sakuhin=5114
1. Statement by the Artist in 1975, originally published in XIX Bienal de Sao Paolo, exh. cat. (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1987), reprinted in Alexandra Monroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, exhibition cat. (New York, 1994), p. 379