Born in 1922 in Mie Prefecture, Sadamasa Motonaga was a member of the legendary Gutai Art Association (1954–72), which became famous for groundbreaking performance works and innovations in painting, sculpture, and installation art. He emerged at a time when a post-atomic surrealist existentialism was at the forefront of artistic development in Japan. However, Motonaga chose a different path and turned his back on the destruction wrought by the war in order to create paintings, sculptures, and performances that were fresh, jubilant, and playful.

In 1954, he began employing a vocabulary of embryonic shapes, flying objects, and cartoon-like forms, modeled in heavy oil paint, that revealed his interest in children’s art, manga, and popul...