Author(s): Axel Vervoordt

Art

Yuko Nasaka (°1936, Japan) is one of the few female members of the Gutai Art Association, Japan’s most important avant-garde movement (1954 – 1972) that has regained its place in art history in recent years with shows in many important international museums, like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Nasaka is a prominent voice of Gutai’s last generation artists who used experimental technology and cutting edge materials to give body to Gutai leader Yoshihara’s credo to “be original” and to create something that has never been created before in a manner that has never been used before.

Almost obsessively Nasaka used a pottery wheel and acrylic resin lacquer to make circles on wooden boards. These circles where assembled into large works that could fill entire exhibition walls, giving the viewer a dazzling experience. T

his book is the first monograph about Yuko Nasaka.  It brings together many historic images and documents of the Gutai period, from the artist’s personal archive and found in the archives of the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History.  It contains an unpublished interview with Nasaka, as well as two essays by Gutai specialists Prof. Ming Tiampo and Midori Yoshimoto placing her work in a broader Gutai context.