Jiro Takamatsu’s Shadow No. 1439, executed just a year before the artist’s death in 1998 is a stellar example of the late Japanese artist’s signature series of Shadow paintings, distinct in its depiction of the artist himself. A key member of the Mona-Ha movement and founder of the minimalist art collective Hi Red Center in post-war Tokyo, Takamatsu was influential in breaking the traditional boundaries between high art and everyday objects, working across the disciplines of painting, sculpture and photography. Conceived in 1964, Takamatsu’s Shadow series has become the artist’s most well-known body of work. In each painting, Takamatsu illustrates his subject’s shadow in trompe l’oeil fashion on bright white canvas.
In the present lot, the artist is shown seated on a stool in what appears to be a stance of contemplation, resting a hand on his chin. The artist rejects an individualized portrayal of his own body in the application of soft gray acrylic rendered in layers atop the white canvas, yet the stool on which he sits makes him appear as a staged subject. In what is likely the artist’s last self-portrait painted before his death, the work remains as one of the last vestiges of both the artist’s presence and hand, even more relevant so close to the date of his death.
