Kazuo Shiraga - Artist Info

About Kazuo Shiraga

Name variants

Shiraga Kazuo
  • Biography

    Kazuo Shiraga was a distinguished Japanese avant-garde artist noted for his unusual method: using his own body to apply paint to the canvas. Revolutionary in the 1950s, this technique now seems to anticipate later international developments in performance art and conceptual art.

    Born in Hyogo Prefecture in Western Japan, Shiraga initially studied Japanese-style painting at the Kyoto City Specialist School of Arts (now the Kyoto City University of Arts). After graduating in 1948, however, he gravitated towards Western styles, taking up oil painting. In the aftermath of Japan's wartime defeat, the time was ripe for iconoclasm, and in 1952 he became a founder member, along with Akira Kanayama, Saburo Murakami and Keiko Tanak...

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