Jiro Takamatsu - 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale Hong Kong Saturday, May 25, 2019 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo
    Private Collection
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    As a key member of the Mono-Ha movement and founder of the legendary art collective, Hi Red Center, Jiro Takamatsu was perhaps the leader of Japanese avant-garde in the 20th century. Working in the fertile balances between Dada, Surrealism and Minimalism and across the disciplines of painting, sculpture and photography in an oeuvre spanning four decades, Takamatsu sought to break traditional boundaries between high art and quotidian objects – what the artist himself called ‘a descent into the everyday’ (nihijo-sei eno kako).

    Takamatsu’s most celebrated works are his Shadow Paintings, a series begun in 1964 as a critical enquiry into the genesis of painting itself. Inspired by 19th century Japanese painting and woodcuts, the artist sought to investigate the formal underpinnings of the practice through the delicate rendering of human form as shadows. However such works also took on darker undertones, as they recall figural imprints left on the walls of Hiroshima upon its nuclear destruction in 1945. Shadow No. 1456 is a later piece from the series, yet undeniably powerful in its composition. While leaving enough ambiguity to allow the creation of one’s own imagined narrative, Shadow No. 1456 acts as a meta-visual experiment to engage regions of the mind and thus opening portals to the realms of memory, nostalgia and fantasy.

122

Shadow No.1456

1997
signed, titled and dated 'JIRO TAKAMATSU 1997 "No.1456"' on the reverse
acrylic on canvas
116.7 x 90.9 cm. (45 7/8 x 35 3/4 in.)
Painted in 1997.

Estimate
HK$500,000 - 700,000 
€56,800-79,600
$64,100-89,700

Sold for HK$525,000

Contact Specialist
Isaure de Viel Castel
Head of Department, 20th Century & Contemporary Art

Charlotte Raybaud
Head of Day Sale, 20th Century & Contemporary Art

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale

Hong Kong Auction 26 May 2019