Background

Yoshihara was born in Osaka, Japan, on January 1, 1905. He was the second son in a wealthy merchant family.

Education

Jiro Yoshihara did not receive any formal art education during his childhood, although he graduated in Economics from the Kwansei Gakuin University in 1928. When he was around 20, he studied under the guidance of Kamiyama Jiro, who taught European art and philosophy, and Tsuguharu Foujita. Yoshihara later joined the Nika-kai (Second Section Association), a group of mainly fauvist style painters, that came out from the Ministry of Education’s academic salon.

Career

Yoshihara started working in his father´s oil factory in 1928. Concurrently, he developed his artistic skills, creating his numerous artworks. During the 1920s and 1930s, he was particularly attracted to the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, and Wassily Kandinsky. He created works in a surrealist manner, then a trend among Japanese avant-garde painters. Gradually, he started to explore geometric abstraction.

He held his first solo exhibition at the Nika-kai’s annual show in 1934, where his still life artworks with fish as their motif received high acclaim. In 1938 together with Yoshihiga Saito and Takeo Yamaguchi he founded the Kyushitsu, an abstract avan-garde group, which is a counter against the Fauvist dominated Nikai-kai. Approximately during the period of 1935 to 1945, it was the darkest and the least prolific period for the artist.

Jiro Yoshihara became influenced by Surrealism, and subsequently and by the Art of Brut and Dubuffed. After the war he supported the development of artistic life in Kasai, using his own enormous financial means earned while an oil industrialist. In 1948 he was one of the co-founders of the art association of Ashiya, of which he soon became the president.

In the early 1950s, works by Yoshihara were featured in the opening shows of Nihon Kokusai Bijutsu-ten (International Art Exhibition Japan) and Gendai Nihon Bijutsu-ten (Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan). In 1951 he headed the Gendai Bijutsu Kondan Kai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group), a monthly meeting held by the young artists from Kansai, in order to discuss contemporary art. Several artists from the Gutai group later joined him.

Jiro Yoshihara participated in the Salon de Mai in Paris in 1952. In 1953 the first exhibit of the "Contemporary Art Discussion Group" took place in his workshop out of home in Shibuya with Shōzō Shimamoto, one of Yoshihara's students who later joined the Gutai group. During this period, the artist drew inspiration from children’s art, Zen calligraphy, as well as action painter Jackson Pollock. He abandoned Japanese modernism of the 1950s and rejected formal abstract painting.

Yoshihara co-founded the Gutai Art Association in December 1954. It debuted at the 7th Yomiuri Independent in spring of 1955. The group became known for their avant-garde performances and artistic methods. Yoshihara also wrote the group's well-known "Gutai Manifesto" in 1956. In 1958, Jiro Yoshihara presented his works again at the Salon de Mai and in 1961 in New York City at the International Carnegie.

In addition to his involvement with the Gutai group, Jiro Yoshihara was also associated with Morita Shiryū and the avant-garde calligraphy movement called Bokujin-kai. Starting in 1962 Yoshihara worked on a series of circle paintings inspired by Zen tradition. Around this time, he moved from the stormy impasto surfaces of the Gutai period to singular circles of water-based acrylic on white, red, or black backgrounds. Over the course of his artistic career, Yoshihara frequently changed his painting styles, responding with his keen sensitivity to new artistic trends in the Western world.

Achievements

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  Jiro Yoshihara is one of the most well-known Japanese artists of the 20th century; he is known as the leader of the Gutai Art Association, which today attracts keen interest among researchers from all over the world.
  
  Yoshihara is best-known for his artworks based on circles, created during his later years. However, Yoshihara was considered to be an influential pioneer of avant-garde art in Japan, even before the formation of the Gutai Art Association.
  
  Throughout his life, Yoshihara was a constant innovator in art and he continued to pioneer new styles, sometimes employing the very latest ideas, and at other times radical techniques.
  
  His creative activities were not interrupted even when the Second World War broke out, and he eventually created nearly 1,000 paintings of various artistic styles, of which more than 800 are currently held by the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art. The museum’s collection, including donations from the artist’s family as well as purchases by the Museum, covers Jiro Yoshihara’s entire career, from his early artworks to those of his last days.
  
  Due to Jiro Yoshihara's pioneering achievements, he had received several awards. From the 1960s to the 1970s, he received the Hyogo Prefectural Cultural Award, Kobe Newspaper First Award for Peace, the First Golden Prize at the Indo-Triennale in New Delhi, India, awards from the Osaka Prefecture and the Japanese Government.

Works

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  • Circle

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  • Circle

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  • White Line on Black

  • To Martha's Memory

  • Work

  • Blue Calligraphic Lines on Dark Blue

  • Room

  • Red Circle on Black

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  • Untitled (YJ-21)

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  • Work

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  • Circle

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  • Blue and Red

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Membership

Jiro Yoshihara joined the Gutai Art Association (Gutai group) in 1954. He was also a member of the Nika-kai (Second Section Association).

• Gutai group , Japan

  1954

References

• Gutai: Splendid Playground This exhibition catalogue aims to demonstrate the range of bold and innovative creativity present in the avant-garde movement, to examine the aesthetic strategies in the cultural, social and political context of postwar Japan and the West, and to further establish Gutai in an expanded, transnational history and critical discourse of modern art.
  2013
• Gutai: Decentering Modernism Gutai is the first book in English to examine Japan’s best-known modern art movement, a circle of postwar artists whose avant-garde paintings, performances, and installations foreshadowed many key developments in American and European experimental art.
  2011
• The Contemporary Artist in Japan Book by David Kung.
  1966
• Japanese Art After 1945 Presents the catalog of an exhibition that features illustrations of paintings, sculpture, performance, video, and installation art
  1994