‘As far as I am concerned, colours are the vast origin of the birth and death of nature…’
Very much a vanguard in his own right, Imaï was one of the first avant-garde Japanese artists to have left Japan for Paris in the immediate post-war period in 1952, predating the now eminent Gutai group’s formation in 1954. Imaï soon found himself in the company of artists such as Georges Matthieu and Sam Francis, and five years later distinguished himself in his debut solo exhibition at Galerie Stadler in 1957, confirming his position as a veritable Informel artist of indubitable international repute. Having become heavily involved with Art Informel, Imaï was instrumental in introducing the famed art critic Michel Tapié to Gutai, who would later on become a strong proponent for the group.
The oeuvre of Toshimitsu Imaï fuses two seemingly divergent elements of the artist’s career: his traditionally trained Nihonga practices merge with his later adopted and mastered Art Informel practices. As evidenced in the visually arresting Untitled, Imaï is an artist who possesses a remarkable sensibility to paint and impasto, and an uncanny ability to evoke emotion through colour and form.
Gathered around Michel Tapié, the Informel artists were in search of a complete break from Modernism; its subject, forms and composition, and rather emphasised a gestural expressive abstraction. As a painter at the heart of the movement, the present work demonstrates the artist’s ongoing exploration of the gestural at the rise of his career: swirling masses of energy— of Fire, Earth and Water; of flowers, of blood, of bodies and forms that dance across the canvas in swathes of reds, yellows and blues. A representation of the artist’s direct experiences through organic forms and brushstrokes, the shapes on the canvas are fluid, but the colours stay within their boundaries—each form coexists in the same space without mixing together. Imaï’s engagement with the canvas is dark and passionate, the result musical in its rhythm and composition, its subject matter deeply human. As in Untitled, one is reminded of corporeal forms and entities; of a pulsing heart, its intricate valves, or perhaps even the fractal patterns occurring in nature.
Though European exposure had allowed Imaï to create highly expressive works through colour and abstraction, they were also deeply rooted in the Japanese culture and its Nihonga tradition. This was acknowledged as early as in the preface of the catalogue written for his seminal 1957 one-man show at the Stadler Gallery by the art critic Takiguchi Shuzo: ‘What Imaï has created in Paris from the very beginning has been transferred in numerous images reflecting the depth of human existence…Now his art is directed toward the sources, and goes back to the primitive elements of Japanese art whose masterpieces formerly realised the perfect unity of signs and matter.’ In the same text, Takiguchi highlights that Imaï’s dedication to the human condition extends itself to man’s relationship with nature, and can even be seen to radiate ‘sympathy for the magic of earth and fire of ancient Japanese potters.’ It is undeniable that there is something tactile and three-dimensional about Untitled, its visceral and organic composition almost sculptural in texture. His heavy use of red is striking, evoking at once the boldness of fire, and red earth central to Japanese pottery. As described by one critic in 1975, ‘Despite all the violence, or even the brutality of the shock produced by lmai's painting, one must recognize in this thick, floating material mixed with rock fragments and varnish, a power which surpasses that power which the material alone is incapable of engendering. There is a savage, almost cruel joy in the boldness of these harmonies’ (R.B., Aujourd'hui, May, 1961 as quoted in IMAÏ Toshimitsu, Kyuryudo Art Publishing Co., Tokyo, 1975, p. 88).
By the 1970s, Imaï was living mostly in Japan, continually producing works and holding regular one man shows. During this period, Imaï had already amassed international acclaim as an artist, having exhibited works at both the 1953 São Paulo Biennale, and having represented Japan in the 1960 Venice Biennale. In 1962, the Japanese artist gained considerable recognition in his home country, when he won a prize at the 5th Exhibition of Japanese Contemporary Art in Tokyo, followed by key acquisitions of his works by the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
