Over an earthen-colored ground, the artist applied a mixture of pigment and calcite powder that resembles the material used for earthen walls, leaving a bit of space to the margins at each side. He then added layers of black paint and charcoal. This work conforms to a representative approach that Kazuki developed in 1956–57 after his return to Japan from abroad and which he termed “black material” or the “Siberian style.” On the wooden frame of the canvas Kazuki inscribed the title of the work, Sun, in kanji characters. The heavenly body, surrounded by a black outline, shines bright in a yellow sky. The work is executed on a M6 format, traditionally used for marine paintings, that Kazuki turned upright, creating a narrow pictorial space that reminds East Asian hanging scrolls. The artist, certainly aware of this association, uses the confines of that narrow expanse to intensify the contrast of the sun, shining from high up in the sky, with the black area representing the earth in the lower half of the painting.

The Siberian Series, which Kazuki often considered his lifework, is based on the artist’s haunting experience of his draft into the war and subsequent internment as a prisoner in Siberia. Black Sun (1961, permanent loan to the Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum), one of the Siberian Series, shows a black sun, just as the title indicates, that projects the strained feeling of defeat on the battle field—in the words of the artist, “the sun that should illuminate the sky with its bright light but has turned black in midair.” For Kazuki Yasuo, the image of the sun was of great significance, and the black sun in particular was linked to the war and his imprisonment.

Preceding Black Sun, Kazuki had already painted Autumn Sun and Sun (both 1957, private collection). In Autumn Sun, the gentle autumn light is dispersed in a whitish shade and contrasts with with a ground of flatly applied color. In Sun, a sharp triangular form is left in the negative, immersed in radiating light. Compared to Autumn Sun, the intense black that might signify the shadows on the ground implies that the sunlight here is of a much more intense nature. The approach taken in creating Sun represented to Kazuki “the discovery of black;” Sun may thus be the blueprint of this particular style.

Afterwards, Kazuki would paint works similar to the above-mentioned Black Sun, where the sun is expressed in monochromatic black, but also tried variations such as Morning Sun (1965, Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum), where it is shown in a vivid red. The present Sun, where sun and sky are of the same color but separated by a black area left in the negative, aligns with such efforts. Sun B (1960, Shimonoseki City Art Museum) follows a similar pattern with sun and background separated by a black outline, but it features more detail for the lower part of the composition representing the ground. Using the more detailed version with its regular, grid-like pattern of Sun B as a clue, it seems reasonable that the righthand three fifths of the present work’s “ground” motif shows a freshly plowed field, while the remaining part left of it is soil that is yet unprepared.

Kazuki Yasuo (painter; 1911–1974)
Painter from Yamaguchi Prefecture. Kazuki graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts where he studied under Fujishima Takeji. He became known for his exploration of unusual material such as calcite or charcoal powder. Kazuki’s Siberia Series, based on his experiences of internment in Siberia, garnered his wide attention nationally. He received the New Bunten Special Prize, the West Japan Cultural Prize and the Shinchosha Japan Fine Art Prize. Kazuki was also awarded the Third Order of the Sacred Treasure.