Saburo Murakami is best known as one of the founders of the Zero Group and his involvement with the Gutai Group. Murakami, who held a doctorate in philosophy with a specialization in aesthetics, made performance works and conceptual paintings.

Some of his best-known works were performances in which he used his body’s momentum to break through many consecutive panels of paper stretched between wood; these were presented as “paintings”. In other works, he used different parts of his body to puncture stretched paper, and threw a ball onto a surface to create marks.

Later in his career, his works merged further with conceptual, performance, and minimal techniques, and away from actual objects. Murakami didn’t want to call his cr...