By the early 1950s Imai was one of the most promising artists in Japan. He moved to Paris in 1952 and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Sorbonne to study medieval history and philosophy. He immediately became part of the dynamic international art scene in Paris and befriended Sam Francis, who introduced him to the critic and dealer Michel Tapié in 1955. In 1956 Imai was assigned by the artist Taro Okamoto, another key figure in postwar Japanese art, to help organize an exhibition to present avant-garde art to a Japanese audience. The exhibition was entitled Sekai: Konnichi no bijutsu (The World: Today’s Art) and became the first instance in which actual works by artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Lucio Fontana, and Karel Appel, reached Japanese soil. As seen in Work, Imai’s paintings are characterized by his passionate experimentation with the material of paint and the realm of the subconscious as visualized in the artist’s gestural engagement with the canvas. His unique sense of color and his ability to evoke an expanding space through flying paints spreading like a spider web draw the viewer closer.