08/11/2017 16:19:00
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Following the international success of the Gutai movement, Artesegno, who have been offering Gutai works for about twenty years, have inserted a specific section on the site www.artesegno.com with more than 30 works for sale by Shimamoto, Sumi, Tanaka, Motonaga, Shiraga, Mukai, Jiro Yoshihara (also Imai and Arai of the Michel Tapiè Group are present).
In the rich selection we would like to point out three rare Hole works by Shimamoto dated 1962, one is a double work, recto and verso, as specified in the certificate, the other two are published in the catalog of the exhibition "Shozo Shimamoto dal Gutai a Proxima 1955-2004", Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna e Museo Orientale Ca' Pesaro, Venice, 2004; there are also two small Whirlpool dated 1965; Shimamoto has recently set very high record prices with his much-sought-after works from the 1950s and 60s: among others we would like to recall a mixed media and holes on newspaper, 1951, cm 41x32, 337.506,00 Euros (Bonhams, UK, 8/3/2017); Black Whirlpool, enamel on canvas, cm 183x231, 1965, 2.004.408,00 Euro (Christies, Hong Kong, 27/5/2017); Whirlpool, oil on canvas, cm 41x31, 1965, 216.860,00 Euro (Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 01/10/2017); Explosion 64-1, oil on canvas, cm 239x179, 1964, 2.470.249,00 Euro (Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 2/4/2017).
Artesegno’s section offers also a rare and important Bottle Crash executed by Shimamoto in 1991: this work was displayed at Galerie Sander, Germany in 1992 and in several exhibitions in Japan. It is an artwork of great significance within the production of Shozo Shimamoto for various reasons: 1) the year of execution, 1991, is important as the few Bottle Crash Shimamoto realized in the early 1990s were executed in the same way as the very rare ones he made in the 1950s/60s post-cannon era: the glass bottles shattered against the stones cast their shards and slivers onto the canvas; 2)its high quality; 3) the numerous exhibitions it took part in, in particular the one held at the Sander Gallery in 1992. The section presents also other two Bottle Crash of the Itami series dated 2001.
The section is very rich with works by Yasuo Sumi. Remarkable his rare and large oil on canvas, cm. 162,1x130,3, Sakuhin dated 1960! This work by Yasuo Sumi is of such historical importance that it was displayed at the historic 9th Gutai Exhibition in 1960, Osaka, Takashimaya and also shown and published in the Catalog of the Exhibition "Action and Emotion, 50s Paintings, Informel, Gutai, Cobra", Osaka, National Museum of Art, p. 85 (illustrated), Sep-Nov 1985. Historical and rare are also the two mixed media on mesh, the first one from 1961, cm 127x92 and the second one dated 1970, cm 127x92; from the Gutai era we would like to point out several of Sumi’s works on paper, dated from 1956 to 1969: among these ones the enamel, cod 21652, is of very high quality, a piece of exactly the same type has become part of the Rachofsky Collection. Several are Sumi’s works on canvas: we like to draw attention in particular to code 23356 realized in 1990, Whitestone provenance, and code 23357, cm 142x77.
Very important is Shuji Mukai’s work executed in the 1960s, it is very rare because most of these pieces made by Mukai during the Gutai period have been lost: the present work is realized in oil, wood and nails according to his most representative typology. From the Gutai era there are also artworks by Motonaga, Shiraga and Yoshihara; finally the works by Imai and Arai, Michel Tapiè group, have important provenances and curricula.