After studying at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, the Kagawa-born artist Genichiro Inokuma (1902–1993) remained in Tokyo and made art. Prior to World War II, he moved to Paris, and studied there from 1938 to 1940 before returning to Japan. Inokuma also relocated to New York in his early 50s, and lived there for roughly 20 years. He later built studios in Tokyo and Hawaii, and pursued a vigorous practice until the age of 90. Absorbing the influence of the times and environment, Inokuma’s works ranged from realistic figures to distorted forms, and they also took on an abstract quality during the artist’s time in New York. Yet, throughout his life, Inokuma never wavered from throwing himself into painting with all of his might.

In his late works, the forms are neither figurative not abstract, everything has an interesting and beautiful balance. These forms inhabited his paintings according to the artist’s own order. No distinction was made between circles and squares, indescribable shapes, and faces and living things like birds – a variety of different forms lived side-by-side in the paintings. Although Inokuma valued the act of seeing and accurately depicting the shape of things, many of the forms that he accumulated over his long career were openly and freely executed without being bound by common sense. This filled his works with wonder.

Inokuma said, “All I do is arrange dreams in a single picture in my own way. What do you see and how do you feel when you look at them?”*

This exhibition focuses on works that Genichiro Inokuma made after the age of 80. Please enjoy looking at these totally unrestrained works by an artist who kept painting and painting for over 70 years.

*From Guén: The Face of Marugame – A Program Commemorating the Opening of the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (Nishinippon Broadcasting, 17 Nov 1991)