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Lot Essay
Takao Iijima, known as an artist by the name Ay-O, was born in Ibaraki, Japan in 1931. Active on the Japanese art scene since the 1950s, he is known for the brilliant colours of his paintings. He moved to New York in 1958, joining the international art organization Fluxus in the early 1960s. As a core member of the group, he co-operated with pioneering artists such as Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, and George Maciunasto in creating a number of conceptual works that have had an important impact on the development of art in the 20th Century.
It was also in the early 1960s, Ay-O, as a conceptual artist, began to create his own paintings which feature rainbows as their main element. Ay-O is extremely sensitive to colour, believing it to be an important constituent element of the art of painting, and he thus began experimenting with colours on canvas. Taking the rainbow as a "concept", the artist began to take colour, originally infinite and disorderly, and organise them in an orderly manner, saying, "For me, colour is the rainbow, the spectrum."
Ay-O expresses on his canvases the gradually shifting gamut of colours in the rainbow, in works where as many as 192 different gradients of colour may be used. The process of applying colour becomes long and complicated due to the need to wait for previous colours to dry before applying further layers. Where the Soul of Rainbow Living A (Lot 525) is typical of Ay-O's rainbow paintings: The bouncing colours and the richness of their gradually changing gradients testify to the artist's fascination with and love for the rainbow.
It was also in the early 1960s, Ay-O, as a conceptual artist, began to create his own paintings which feature rainbows as their main element. Ay-O is extremely sensitive to colour, believing it to be an important constituent element of the art of painting, and he thus began experimenting with colours on canvas. Taking the rainbow as a "concept", the artist began to take colour, originally infinite and disorderly, and organise them in an orderly manner, saying, "For me, colour is the rainbow, the spectrum."
Ay-O expresses on his canvases the gradually shifting gamut of colours in the rainbow, in works where as many as 192 different gradients of colour may be used. The process of applying colour becomes long and complicated due to the need to wait for previous colours to dry before applying further layers. Where the Soul of Rainbow Living A (Lot 525) is typical of Ay-O's rainbow paintings: The bouncing colours and the richness of their gradually changing gradients testify to the artist's fascination with and love for the rainbow.