Takamatsu Jiro was an influential artist, theorist, and teacher in 1960s and 1970s Japan. Highly analytical, intellectual, yet playful, his work combines subversive elements of Surrealism and Dada along with aspects of Minimalism and Existentialism.

Early in his artistic career, along with fellow artists Akasegawa Genpei and Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Takamatsu founded the collective Hi Red Centre (1963-64), which launched a series of actions in Tokyo. Satirical performances performed in public spaces, these actions were an expression of anxiety about the rapid restructuring of Japan and to critique the country’s postwar mass capitalist society.1

Takamatsu studied oil painting at the Tokyo National Unive1. Hayashi Michio, Tracing the Graphic in Postwar Japanese Art, p. 101-104, in Tokyo 1955-1970 A New Avant-Garde, Exhibition Catalogue, MOMA, (New York, 2012) 2. Nakanishi Hiroyuki, The Perspective of Jiro Takamatsu: Together with His Drawing, Book Design and Illustration Works in Chronological Order, in Exhibition catalogue, Jiro Takamatsu: Trajectory of Work, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, (Tokyo, 2015), p. 179-186 ...