Eishin YOZA
Hiver XII
2015

About the Item

Born in 1951, Eishin Yoza was largely inspired by the 1970s growing up. The art sphere of the 1970s was epitomized by a desire to evolve and strengthen itself, as a reaction to the many tensions of the previous decade. One of the most central movement of the 1970s was Conceptualism, which appeared as an offshoot of Minimalism, while the experimental, creative journey of Process art emerged by combining essential features of Conceptualism with further reflections on art itself. The earliest ideas of environmentalism sprung from Land Art, which took art into earth itself, carving the land and bringing art to the outdoors. For the first time since the regression of Abstract Expressionism, Expressive figure painting slowly re-emerged and regained its prominence, particularly in Germany through the works of world renowned figures Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. The city of New York remained as the most prominent artistic hub of the decade, with international artists wandering through the downtown scene, visiting bars and art galleries, consolidating the idea of New York City as a cosmopolitan and sophisticated cultural capital. Most of the leading artistic figures of the 1960s remained highly influential and popular throughout the 1970s. Andy Warhol, for instance, fortified his reputation as a legendary artist, by bifurcating into film and magazine publishing, thus introducing a ground-breaking concept of cross-cultural activity for a visual artist of such fame. A few significant international movements that defined the decade include photorealism, which was firstly introduced in the 1960s and reached commercial and critical success in the 1970s, as well as feminism which had a strong impact on the visual culture. Artists such as Jannis Kounnelis, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto attained international success, as they were widely acknowledged as renowned members of the Italian movement Arte Povera, critically acclaimed in the 1970s. In the eastern part of the globe, Japanese and Korean artists who showed a strong interest in the European ideologies of phenomenology, allied with the Mono-Ha movement, exploring and shifting the frontiers between natural and industrial materials. Using stone, glass, cotton, sponge, wood, oil and water, they intended to give life to artworks that would emphasize the ephemeral state of these various elements and their surroundings, playing with their interdependency. Reaching the end of the 1970s, street art, evolving from graffiti, was starting to truly captivate the fine art community. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat helped legitimize spray painting and tagging, demonstrating that their artworks could subsist at the same time in art galleries and on city walls. Following, the international extent of street art would become extremely significant, representing an astonishing form of artistic expression.

Creator:

Eishin YOZA (1951, Japanese)

Creation Year:

2015

Dimensions:

Height: 9.06 in (23.02 cm)Width: 13.39 in (34.02 cm)

Medium:

Ink,Oil

Movement & Style:

Minimalist

Period:

21st Century