Background
Tanaka was born in Osaka, Japan, on February 10, 1932.
1956
Electric Dress.
Osaka, Japan
Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts.
13-6 Oekutsukakecho, Nishikyo Ward, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture 610-1197, Japan
Kyoto City University of Arts.
Atsuko Tanaka.
Tanaka was born in Osaka, Japan, on February 10, 1932.
Atsuko Tanaka was a student of several local art schools where she worked generally in a figurative style. Among the schools she attended were the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts in 1950, starting from 1951 she studied at the Department of Western Painting at Kyoto Municipal College of Art (present-day Kyoto City University of Arts).
In 1955 Tanaka became a member of the Gutai group, an avant-garde artists' movement. She had her first individual exhibition in Osaka in 1963. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured some of Tanaka’s works in a 1966 exhibition entitled “The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture.”
She belonged to it until 1965. The same year, Tanaka and her husband moved into their new house at the temple Myo*ho*ji, Osaka. The painter created most of her works, painting on the second floor of her parents’ house. Their house was ten minutes away from the place she lived.
Many of Tanaka’s works involved electric light. Other performances included outfits changing that underlined limitation or transformation. Many of her performances also offered everyday objects, including textiles, doorbells, light bulbs, for aesthetic consideration. She also made engravings on the sand. In later years she devoted her career mainly to abstract artworks. Her major works were the following: Work Bell and Work (Yellow Cloth) (both 1955), Stage Clothes (1956).
Atsuko Tanaka and her husband moved from Osaka to Nara in 1972. In the 2000s, her works were presented in numerous exhibitions not only in Japan but abroad as well. Her works were shown at the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, the New York Grey Art Gallery and Paula Cooper Gallery, the Nagoya Gallery HAM, as well as at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck.
Quotations: "I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work."
Tanaka got married to Akira Kanayama in 1965.