Kazuo Shiraga

An exhibition of Kazuo Shiraga’s paintings in London, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in the city in a decade. A selection of Shiraga’s forceful gestural canvases, mostly dating to the early 1960s, a period when the artist was gaining international attention, will be on view. 

Shiraga emerged as one of the most prominent members of the avant-garde group Gutai with his sensational 1955 performance, Challenging Mud.  In a work that has become one of the canonical touchstones of postwar Japanese art, the artist used his entire body to aggressively manipulate a plot of mud, enacting a struggle between human form and material.