TADAAKI KUWAYAMA
untitl.., 1968
Acrylic on canvas, aluminium frame
272 x 102cm WH

The artist Tadaaki Kuwayama, born in Nagoya/Japan in 1932, has lived in New York since 1958 [1], creates in his painting a synthesis of positions of American color field painting (Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, etc.) and meditative pictorial traditions of his Japanese culture.

He prefers a very reduced colour scheme and has also been working with metallic additives since the early 70s, which give the subtle colours a slightly shimmering surface and use the incidence of light as a design element for an iridescent colour effect. Through these fine differentiations of the colors, their effect in the room also changes through the respective position of the viewer.

The segment-like subdivision of the individual images, their stelae-like or object-like character and their rhythmic arrangement in series, where the individual parts often vary only through colour nuances, create strong affinities with Japanese architecture and interior design.

As Eugen Gomringer mentions in a catalogue text [2], in the ancient Japanese art tradition, no fundamental value is attached to the characteristics of originality or uniqueness. On the other hand, repetition and reproduction are values of central importance (in Western painting, for example, Ad Reinhardt took up this in all consistency in his black paintings).

Thus, the seriality and variation of similar individual elements also plays a major role in Kuwayama’s works. He, too, strives for the absence of artistic individuality and a kind of unobtrusive, anonymous perfection of subtly and finely designed surfaces, which are created as autonomous works, but which unfold their effect very strongly through the reference to the surrounding space.

Ute Riese, 2008

[1] Tadaaki Kuwayama *4th März 1932 in Nagoya (JP), †18th August 2023 in New York City (NY, USA)
[2] Katalog: Tadaaki Kuwayama, Project for Ingolstadt, Städtische Galerie im Theater Ingolstadt, 1997. Stiftung DKM, Linien stiller Schönheit, 2008, 262 – 265, fig 264 – 265.

The picture can be seen in the permanent presentation of the collection.