Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Photo Avant-garde Nagoya at the Nagoya City Museum of Art in 1989.

Emerging in the 1930s from the influence of overseas modernism and alongside other groups such as the Naniwa Photo Club in Kansai (Kiyoshi Koishi, Hanawa Ginware, etc.), Ashiya Photo Club (Iwata Nakayama, etc.), and Tampei Photo Club (Nakaji Yasui, etc.), Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde included photographers such as Minoru Sakata, who is known for “modeling photography”, Yoshio Shimozato, a painter who is famous for Mesemu Zoku: Chogenjitsushugi Shashi-shu, Kansuke Yamamoto, who was also active in VOU, and Tsugio Tajima.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and may have some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibitions at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Hyogo, 29 August–15 October, 1989 and Seibu Department Store Ikebukuro, Tokyo, 27 October—15 November, 1989.

Iwata Nakayama (1895-1949) is regarded as a one of the most important contributors to the Shinko Shashin movement. From 1918 he travelled in the the west and was attracted to avant-garde movements and moved in bohemian circles where he met Shimizu Toshi, Man Ray, Fujita Tsuguji, and Enrico Prompolini. These encounters left a deep impression on him and when he returned to Japan in 1927 he energetically set about forming his own vision of ‘pure art photography’. In 1929 he settled in Ashiya (nr. Kobe) and in the following year founded the Ashiya Camera Club with Hanaya Kambei, Korai Seiji, and others. This club became the main driving force of New Photography in Japan. Together with Kimura and Nojima he founded Koga magazine in 1932 that was the most important forum for artistic photography at the time.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and may have some traces of previous ownership.

Comprehensive survey of early Japanese abstract painting (and photography). Including Koshiro Onchi, Iwata Nakayama, Saburo Hasegawa, Kiyoshi Koishi, Ryuichi Amano, Ei-Q and many more.

Murakami Saburō’s ‘Paper-Breaking’ performances, in which he burst through multiple sheets of kraft paper stretched across wooden frames with a sharp crack, were synonymous with the artist. He performed them on close to 40 occasions, between 1955 and 1994, throughout his artistic career. Murakami said that, in 1955, he was inspired to adopt this approach after his son came crashing through the fusuma (sliding door) of his locked room (where the artist was polishing up a plan for a new work to present in the 1st Gutai Art Exhibition) in a bid to get his father to play with him. From that time on, ‘Paper-Breaking’ became a physical means for him to present and investigate questions related to time and space, chance and inevitability, and the self and others.

With essays by Ikegami Tsukasa and Reiko Tomii.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Onchi, A Poet of Colors and Forms at the Yokohama Museum of art, October 8 – November 6, 1994.

Koshiro Onchi was the most important figure in the ‘Sosaku Hanga’ movement from 1918 until his death, outstanding as a print artist, photographer, book designer and active as a poet, founder and editor of magazines, an author on the subject of prints, art and literature, a leader and organiser of societies and encourager of other artists.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.