Colour no.96

Oil on canvas

Signed Yamada Masaaki (Japanese) and M. Yamada; dated 1999 on the reverse.

Emerging from the post-war turmoil, Yamada Masaaki (1930-2010) embarked on a prolific artistic career, creating approximately 5,000 works over more than five decades. His oeuvre can be divided into three main phases: the ‘Still Life’ series (1948-1955), the ‘Work’ series (1956-1995) and the ‘Colour’ series (1997-2001).

In the early stages of his career, Yamada focused on still life paintings, influenced by his experiences of three air raids in Tokyo and the following post-war bleakness. The ‘Still Life’ series features objects such as bottles, vessels and fruits, reimagined from his memories and gradually deconstructed. In 1953, Yamada studied under the abstractionist Hasegawa Saburo (1906-1957), which marked a pivotal shift towards abstraction in his work, leading to the inception of the ‘Work’ series in 1956.

The ‘Work’ series, spanning almost 40 years until 1995, is characterised by geometric patterns such as stripes, crosses and grids. The recurring stripe motif illustrates Yamada's theories of ‘all colours’, ‘colour equality’ and ‘totality’, which are the concepts detailed in his extensive production notebooks spanning 2,000 pages. Initially multicoloured, the stripes evolved to a more restrained palette of two or three colours by around 1965.

After concluding the ‘Work’ series in 1995, Yamada transitioned to the ‘Colour’ series in 1997. As exemplified in this present work, his final series focuses on canvases painted in single colours with underlying hues subtly visible at the edges, adding a layered dimension to the flat surface.

Yamada's work has been featured in significant exhibitions, including ‘The 1960s: A Decade of Change in Contemporary Japanese Art’ (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kyoto, 1981) and the 19th Sao Paulo Biennial (1987). Notable solo exhibitions include ‘endless: The Paintings of Yamada Masaaki’ (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Kyoto, 2016-2-17) and ‘The Paintings of Masaaki Yamada from “Still Life” to “Work” to “Color”’ (Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, 2005).

His works are housed in various museum collections including: the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and Kyoto, the National Museum of Art in Osaka, the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Aichi Prefectual Museum of Art, Aomori Musem of Art, Ashiya City Museum of Art, Chiba City Museum of Art, Color Museum, Fuchu Art Museum, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art and Yokohama Museum of Art.