“How exciting it will be if I can immediately put an idea in practice, as it comes to me, without worrying about the result - throwing all my past pesky hesitation out of the window”
Kazuo Shiraga was one of the key members of the avant-garde Gutai group, founded in 1954, which rejected traditional painting methods in favour of physical and expressive performance that employed a wide range of materials. Within Gutai, Shiraga became a leading voice, writing frequently for the journal through which they expressed their ideals.
Image: Courtesy Amagasaki Cultural Center
During his years of association with the group, Shiraga developed his distinctive technique, which consisted of painting whilst suspended from a rope, thereby using his feet instead of his hands, and resulting in violently abstracted canvases with thick impasto. Following his first experiments, the artist expressed his desire to “paint as though rushing around a battlefield, Paint until exhaustion, until I collapsed” (Kazuo Shiraga, ‘Omou Koto (Thoughts)’, Gutain 2, 10 October 1955, p. 20). Despite the pain that this act would cause to his body, he thought that employing such untrained limbs would enable him to set himself free from the constraints of academic painting, approaching a more spontaneous form of creative expression.
Shiraga did acknowledge his connection to the contemporary American art scene, as he claimed: “...I do remember that the paintings from America as a whole looked very fresh, although there were works from other foreign countries, too… This may possibly have had some subconscious impact on me… I completely forgot their names, but there were some paintings looking like splash patterns. As I recall, there could have been De Kooning, too” (Kazuo Shiraga in conversation with Haryu Ichiro, 1973, quoted in: Reiko Tomii and Fergus McCaffrey, Kazuo Shiraga: Six Decades, New York 2009, p. 62).
The composition of Hirogaru Ogi suggests that the artist has moved across the canvas in a semi-circular motion, spreading paint with his feet. The careful precision which characterises the left section would almost lead the viewer to question whether the artist had used additional tools. The work’s vivid and predominantly sanguine colour palette is signature within the artist’s practice, and serves to enhance the physicality of the work.