Jiro Yoshihara
| Jiro Yoshihara 吉原 治良 |
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|---|---|
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| Born |
January 1, 1905 Osaka |
| Died | February 19, 1972 (aged 67) Ashiya |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Gutai group |
Jiro Yoshihara (吉原 治良 Yoshihara Jirō, January 1, 1905 – February 19, 1972) was a Japanese painter. In 1954, along with Shōzō Shimamoto, he co-founded the avant-garde Gutai group in Osaka. He was a businessman and scion of a family that owned a cooking-oil company, along with a group of young, Hanshin-region artists. Yoshihara had taught Western-style painting before becoming Gutai’s leader. Yoshihara wrote the "Gutai Manifesto" in 1956 and was the leader of the so named group of internationally acclaimed avant-garde artists representative of Japan's post-war art world. He worked in surrealist and abstract expressionist painting styles before turning, in his final years, to the repeated depiction of circles reminiscent of "satori," the enlightenment of Zen. This white circle was made by leaving the canvas unpainted while painting the background black. When asked about his circles, Yoshihara said that he could not manage to paint even one circle with satisfaction, an indication of the depths of his pursuit of this form. Indeed, no two of his circles are shaped exactly alike. He was the leader of the Gutai Group until his death in 1972.
Jiro Yoshihara was born in Osaka, Japan in 1905 as the second son of a wealthy merchant family. He did not receive any formal art education during his childhood. In his twenties, he received guidance from Kamiyama Jiro (1985–1940), who taught European art and philosophy, and Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968), who lived in Paris in those years. Yoshihara later joined the Nika-kai (Second Section Association), a group of predominately fauvist style painters, that came out from the Ministry of Education’s academic salon.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Yoshihara was attracted to the work of Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, and Wassily Kandinsky.
In 1934, Yoshihara’s first exhibition was taken place at the Nika-kai’s annual show. During the 1930s, Yoshihara works were created in a surrealist manner that was popular among Japanese avant-garde artists. Gradually, Yoshihara gains his interest in geometric abstraction.
In 1938, he founded the Kyushitsu-kai (Ninth Room Association), which is a counter against the Fauvist dominated Nikai-kai. Approximately during the years of 1935 to 1945, it was the darkest and the most least active period for Yoshihara.
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