Ushio Shinohara Abstract Prints

Colorful modern screen print triptych by famous Japanese artist Ushio Shinohara. The work features a group of five faceless figures as they celebrate the Doll Festival, an annual holiday organized to pray for young girls’ prosperity. By utilizing a distinctly pop art color palette and style to depict a traditionally Japanese image the artist reflects on the prevalence of symbols embedded in society at the time of modernization and Americanization of Japanese society. Signed and editioned in the front lower right corner. Currently hung in a thin silver frame. Dimensions Without Frame: H 27.75 in. x W 56 in. Artist Biography: Born 1932 in Tokyo, Japan. Lives and works in New York City, United States of America. A founding member of the Japanese Neo Dada group (originally known as Neo Dadaism Organisers), Ushio Shinohara embraced pop art as early as 1963 with his Imitation Art series, a critical and provocative take on the work of American pop artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. These imitations – rough copies of works by the American artists – reflected on the notion of newness and originality in art, as well as on Japanese modern art’s relationship to Western art. Growing up in Japan during the Second World War, Shinohara witnessed the rapid Americanization of his country. After inventing his famous Boxing Paintings in 1960–1, he gave up gesture-based painting and turned towards more mechanical means of production using new industrial materials and airbrush. Revisiting traditional Japanese art, from 1965 he developed a series of Oiran works imbued with pop’s aesthetics. Modernizing the motif of oiran, a high-class courtesan traditionally depicted in woodblock prints from the Edo period (1603–1868), he adapted it to the context of pop art. Shinohara settled in New York in 1969 where he refused to partake in the minimalist and conceptual art movements, pursuing in the 1970s figurative works such as his series of cardboard-made Motorcycle Sculptures. Presented at Ushio Shinohara’s debut exhibition Doll Festival at the commercial Tokyo Gallery in 1965, the Oiran series transformed traditional imagery into a groundbreaking body of work using fluorescent paint, plastic and aluminum sheets. His eponymous Doll Festival 1966 is emblematic of this series, with its pop treatment of the traditional subject. Although the faceless characters have been denied expression, their positions and attires in the painting introduce a narrative: the five figures are both actors and spectators of a scene withheld from the viewer. At the center of the triptych, a man wearing a Western outfit...

Ushio Shinohara (born 1932, Tokyo), nicknamed “Gyu-chan”, is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist. His bright, large work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul and others. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013). Shinohara's parents instilled in him a love for painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. His father was a tanka poet who was taught by Wakayama Bokusui. Shinohara’s mother was a painter who went to the Woman’s Art University (Joshibijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo. In 1952 Shinohara entered the Tokyo Art University (later renamed to Tokyo University of the Arts), majoring in oil painting, however he left before graduation in 1957. In 1960 Shinohara participated in a group called "Neo-Dada Organizers". (Masunobu Yoshimura, Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara, Sho Kazakura, Tomio Miki, Tetsumi Kudo, Natsuyuki Nakanishi) This group of artists showed their works of art in an exhibition in the 1960s called the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. This exhibition was sponsored by a newspaper, was open to the public, and was not judged by anyone. This type of exhibition was a form of an anti-salon and was a stepping stone for Shinohara’s sculptures of found objects which acquired the label of “junk art...

Ushio Shinohara (born 1932, Tokyo), nicknamed “Gyu-chan”, is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist. His bright, large work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul and others. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013). Shinohara's parents instilled in him a love for painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. His father was a tanka poet who was taught by Wakayama Bokusui. Shinohara’s mother was a painter who went to the Woman’s Art University (Joshibijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo. In 1952 Shinohara entered the Tokyo Art University (later renamed to Tokyo University of the Arts), majoring in oil painting, however he left before graduation in 1957. In 1960 Shinohara participated in a group called "Neo-Dada Organizers". (Masunobu Yoshimura, Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara, Sho Kazakura, Tomio Miki, Tetsumi Kudo, Natsuyuki Nakanishi) This group of artists showed their works of art in an exhibition in the 1960s called the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. This exhibition was sponsored by a newspaper, was open to the public, and was not judged by anyone. This type of exhibition was a form of an anti-salon and was a stepping stone for Shinohara’s sculptures of found objects which acquired the label of “junk art...

19 x 15.5 with backing 12 x 12 image Ushio Shinohara (born 1932, Tokyo), nicknamed “Gyu-chan”, is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist. His bright, large work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul and others. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013). Shinohara's parents instilled in him a love for painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. His father was a tanka poet who was taught by Wakayama Bokusui. Shinohara’s mother was a painter who went to the Woman’s Art University (Joshibijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo. In 1952 Shinohara entered the Tokyo Art University (later renamed to Tokyo University of the Arts), majoring in oil painting, however he left before graduation in 1957. In 1960 Shinohara participated in a group called "Neo-Dada Organizers". (Masunobu Yoshimura, Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara, Sho Kazakura, Tomio Miki, Tetsumi Kudo, Natsuyuki Nakanishi) This group of artists showed their works of art in an exhibition in the 1960s called the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. This exhibition was sponsored by a newspaper, was open to the public, and was not judged by anyone. This type of exhibition was a form of an anti-salon and was a stepping stone for Shinohara’s sculptures of found objects which acquired the label of “junk art...

Ushio Shinohara (born 1932, Tokyo), nicknamed “Gyu-chan”, is a Japanese Neo-Dadaist artist. His bright, large work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seoul and others. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, are the subjects of a documentary film by Zachary Heinzerling called Cutie and the Boxer (2013). Shinohara's parents instilled in him a love for painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. His father was a tanka poet who was taught by Wakayama Bokusui. Shinohara’s mother was a painter who went to the Woman’s Art University (Joshibijutsu Daigaku) in Tokyo. In 1952 Shinohara entered the Tokyo Art University (later renamed to Tokyo University of the Arts), majoring in oil painting, however he left before graduation in 1957. In 1960 Shinohara participated in a group called "Neo-Dada Organizers". (Masunobu Yoshimura, Genpei Akasegawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara, Sho Kazakura, Tomio Miki, Tetsumi Kudo, Natsuyuki Nakanishi) This group of artists showed their works of art in an exhibition in the 1960s called the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. This exhibition was sponsored by a newspaper, was open to the public, and was not judged by anyone. This type of exhibition was a form of an anti-salon and was a stepping stone for Shinohara’s sculptures of found objects which acquired the label of “junk art...