Yoshimoto (some spell it Yashitomo) Nara was born in 1959 in Hirosaki, Japan and has exhibited extensively in the United States as well as Japan and European countries.

Using a style combining the effect of Japanese prints and Pop Art cartoons, he paints solitary, doll-like children to comment upon the decline of society, East and West. To Nara, children symbolize a world marked by confusion and anxiety about an unknown future. Since 1988, he has divided his time between Japan and Germany, where he studied art. He sees himself as a voluntary exile. Because art schools and museums were conservative in Japan, Nara, also a sculptor working in a similarly simplistic style, studied contemporary art...