“Create what has never been done before!” Yoshihara Jiro famously instructed the Gutai Art Association (hereafter “Gutai”) members the above motto.

As the founder and leader of the influential Japanese postwar avant-garde art group Gutai, Yoshihara has made such immense contributions to the postwar global art scene that some even suggest that Gutai itself is his work. Indeed, the diverse vanguard art activities conducted by the Gutai members, ranging from early performative works, such as Shiraga Kazuo’s “foot painting” and Shimamoto Shozo’s “throwing painting,” to Gutai’s active participation to the International Art informel movement from the late 1950s, are now all recognized as an important part of the global postwar art history.

Yoshihara highly praised the innovative and creative activities of the Gutai members on the one hand, he himself, as a painter who was trained to paint after numerous studies, had reached a deadlock when he attempted the Art informel working method on the other. Body gesture and improvisation, the two fundamental properties of Art informel, might have largely restricted the freedom of art making for Yoshihara. Circle, the subject now recognized as Yoshihara’s signature, provided a solution to him at that moment.

On the motif of circle, Yoshihara once noted: “Therein lies possibilities as in nite as the unmeasurable depth of a swamp.” From the early 1960s, Yoshihara threw himself into the production of countless circles of different forms, varying from open and closed ones, nearly perfect circles and circles with wavy contours, and so forth. Such diversity resulted from Yoshihara’s scrupulous working method.

Take the present work as an example, it appears to be a red circle painted on black ground at first glance. However, close observation reveals that the circle is bordered with black paint on a red-painted background. Although the artist’s brushwork can be perceived from the surface, the work is not at all born out of improvisation nor spontaneity. Instead, Yoshihara produced the work on the base of thorough composition and drawing. In this way, Yoshihara reached the ultimate art-making method suitable for himself, and succeeded in creating artworks that is unprecedented.

Yoshihara’s manner of carefully bordering the circle with black paint on the vividly painted red background is in a way in common with his state, as Gutai’s mentor, of leading the young, talented members with his knowledge and guidance. Therefore, the present work is a masterpiece that symbolize Yoshihara, the highly- praised leader of Gutai, the important postwar avant-garde art group in the international art scene.

Yoshihara Jiro (yoga painter; 1905−1972)
Osaka-born yoga painter and an enterpriser. Inherited his family vegetable oil wholesaling business on the one hand, and pursued an artistic career on the other. Learned oil painting first by himself at junior high school, and later under Kamiyama Jiro. Kamiyama introduced him to Togo Seiji and Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita. Foujita recommended him to exhibit at the Nika-kai, where Yoshihara became friends with Hasegawa Saburo and Yamaguchi Takeo. Assisted the revitalization of Nika-kai, and set up the Gutai Art Association, an avant-garde artists’ group after the Second World War. His circle paintings have received great attentions since then.