Kenji Yoshida, La Vie, 1994. Metal and oil on canvas, 53 x 74 cm.
Photo by Jonathan Greet. Image courtesy of October Gallery, London.
Kenji Yoshida: Supreme Beauty
18 April – 18 May 2013
The October Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by the late Kenji Yoshida
(1924-2009). In 2007, Yoshida said ‘Life brightens most when peace occurs. Peace is
supreme beauty’ and this constantly repeated idea suffuses his art. This exhibition will
display selected and previously unseen works from different periods of the artist’s career.
His first years after moving to Paris in 1964 to work with Stanley Hayter are best
characterized by his subtle and graceful etchings, varying from elementary shapes to
delicate and intricate motifs against dark backgrounds. In the oil on paper works from
the ‘70s and ‘80s, Yoshida experimented with irregular forms and muted colours merging
imperceptibly into one another. However, this exhibition will focus primarily on Yoshida’s
later paintings in which gold and silver are dynamically applied upon contrasting fields
of bright colours and black grounds. Stunning multi-panelled pieces remember, in their
sheer size, traditional Japanese lacquer screens and their exquisite deployment of gold
and silver leaf. Yoshida’s work reflects the Japanese aesthetic ideals of wabi and sabi, a
mindful approach to everyday life, which accepts that beauty is transient, imperfect
and always incomplete. Yoshida’s abstract compositions of interacting and
complementary elements can be seen as formal explorations reminiscent either of
earthly landscapes or of cosmic spheres. His canvasses quietly overwhelm the viewer in
their profound contemplation of a serene beauty that celebrates nothing less than Seimei, the intense power of Life, itself.
As a young man growing up in Osaka, Yoshida first trained as an artist under the
direction of Furukido Masaru Sensei, to whom he often later referred as his great mentor.
Yoshida was only thirteen when war broke out in 1937, beginning with the Imperial
Army’s invasion of China. The following year saw further expansion of hostilities with
Japanese invasions of Russia and Mongolia. The country of Yoshida’s birth would
continue on an evermore-frenetic war footing until the ultimate admission of defeat, in
1945.
Given his age there was never any doubt that Yoshida would be sucked into conflict,
and he was trained as a pilot of the Japanese Naval Air Force. By the time he graduated,
in 1945, the end of the war was already looming, and the decision was made to launch
the remaining planes in ‘kami-kaze’ attacks against the onrushing might of the American
Pacific fleet. The experience of watching flights of his young companions take-off, never
to return, whilst awaiting the orders that would inevitably seal his own fate, permanently
marked Yoshida in ways that we can barely imagine today.
Records of the final letters left by other pilots leave us in no doubt as to the unbearable
strains under which they all suffered. Yoshida was spared only by the sudden capitulation
of the Japanese High Command following the shock of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki – at which point, still only twenty-one years old, Yoshida knew he was living
a charmed life, and had a serious duty to remember those many others who had not
been so fortunate.
Recalling the specific admonition of the pacifist Furukido not to take up arms but to
pursue painting instead, Yoshida threw himself back into his art with the passion of a man
who knew how truly fortunate he was still to be able to paint. In 1964, when he left Japan
to live in Paris, he took conscious aim at the grandest subject of all, a systematic
approach to describing the complexities of the life-force that invigorates everything, and
for many years the majority of his canvases have carried that single, most telling of all
titles, whether in French, Japanese or English: La Vie, Sei-Mei, Inochi - quite simply – ‘Life’
or ‘Life-Force’. The power of his art returns insistently to the fundamentals of life, but his
yearning for peace is also transmitted in the magnificent, elliptical language of forms and
colours that he developed in the hope of revealing the essential unity of humanity to
itself.
In 1993, the quality of Yoshida’s work was recognised when he was honoured as the first
living artist ever to be given a solo exhibition at the Japanese Galleries of the British
Museum. During the Festival of Canterbury, 2003, his magnificent octagonal installation,
Sei-Mei was installed at Canterbury Cathedral. In 2006 the Château de Blois, in the Loire
Valley held a major retrospective solo exhibition. His final exhibition, in 2008, was in the
main exhibition hall of UNESCO in the centre of Paris – his adopted city and home. In
2010, Japan’s National Broadcasting Network (NHK) created a special documentary
entitled ‘Sei-Mei’ on Kenji Yoshida’s life, work and unwavering message of peace.
- Notes for Editors Exhibition:
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Kenji Yoshida: Supreme Beauty
18 April 2013 – 18 May 2013
17 April 2013 at 6pm
October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AL
020 7242 7367
020 7405 1851
Tuesday – Saturday 12.30 - 5.30pm
Tuesday – Friday 12.30 - 2.30pm
Free
www.octobergallery.co.uk
press@octobergallery.co.uk
Holborn/Russell Square
19, 25, 38, 55, 168 and 188
Alana Pryce - 020 7242 7367