Background

Jiro Takamatsu was born on February 20, 1936 in Tokyo, Japan.

Education

Jiro studied at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (present-day Tokyo University of the Arts), graduating in 1958.

Career

After finishing studies, Takamatsu worked in a range of mediums, including sculpture, photography, painting, drawing and performance, and probed the material and metaphysical foundations of artistic practice.

Inspired by images of shadows in the 19th-century Japanese painting and woodcuts as well as by real-life shadows cast on paper sliding-doors in domestic settings, Takamatsu’s Shadow Painting series investigated the formal underpinnings of painting through delicate depictions of shadows (of keys or human figures) in enamel and acrylic. The series also recalls figural imprints left on walls left after the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima. Takamatsu bridled at mid-century essentializations of material and medium, preferring instead an excess of the former and, akin to artists like Eva Hesse, created sculptures such as Slack of Net, that sagged and bowed due to gravity. His "Oneness of Concrete" took the form of a large block broken into hundreds of fragments, a monument-made-ruin, that challenged the supremacy of the Minimalist cube.

In 1966, the Tokyo Gallery held his first solo exhibition and later presented seven more solo shows between 1969 and 1987. Jiro represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1968 and exhibited at the Paris Biennial in 1969. He also took part in São Paulo Biennial in 1973.

During the period from 1968 to 1972, Takamatsu taught at Tama Art University in Tokyo.

Achievements

• Takamatsu gained prominence as a founding member of the Hi-Red Center collective and a key figure in the development of the Mono-Ha movement.
  
  His most celebrated works are the "Shadow Paintings", in which he painted the isolated shadows of solitary figures and items in delicate grey.
  
  In 1972, Jiro was awarded the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Print Biennial.
  
  The artist's works were included at group shows at the Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Yokohoma Art Museum, Japan, and the Guggenheim Museum SoHo.

Works

More photos

• instalation

  • Slack of Net

  • The Pole of Wave

  • Shadow (Mrs. Takamatsu with a Comb)

  • Photograph of Photograph

  • Double Shadow of a Woman

  • Compound #703

  • Maquettes of "The Poles and Space"

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Photograph of Photograph

    1973

  • Strings in Bottles

    1963

  • Oneness of Concrete

    1971

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Compound

    1971

  • Photograph of Photograph

• painting

  • In the Form of Square

  • Jiro Takamatsu

  • Tape

  • Tape

  • In the Form of Square

  • In the Form of Square

  • Oneness of Paper

  • Oneness of Paper

  • Frame

  • Point No.15

  • Compound

  • Perspective

    1969

  • Space in Two Dimensions

    1982

  • Space in Two Dimensions, No. 946

    1979

  • Space

    1981

  • Compound

    1978

  • Space in Two Dimensions, No.1300

    1986

  • Space in Two Dimensions

    1978

  • Space in Two Dimensions

    1977

  • Overlapping

    1983

Membership

Takamatsu was a founding member of the Hi-Red Center collective alongside Genpei Akasegawa and Natsuyuki Nakanishi in 1963, and a key figure in the development of the Mono-Ha movement.

• founding member

  Hi-Red Center

  1963

Connections

colleague:

Genpei Akasegawa

References

• Jiro Takamatsu: The Temperature of Sculpture
• Jiro Takamatsu