Carp Streamer 鯉のぼり

In 1957, the French art movement Informel (meaning "without form") swept over Japan. It was Toshimitsu Imai, who had participated in this innovative movement in France and returned to Japan in this year after five years' stay abroad, that brought this new trend. Together with the art critic Michel Tapié and the painter Georges Mathieu, who visited Japan in close succession, he visited many cities and initiated the movement in Japan, thus delivering a great impact on the Japanese art world which remained little changed after the war. This work, produced in the early 1960s, is clearly different from his works from the late 1950s presenting chaotic motion in dark browns, and the bright colors in particular indicate that the artist has entered a new stage. The vermilion applied thickly and in complex texture upon the pale blue is bursting with energy as if it has exploded out of the paint tube, and it is ready to flow over the edge of the canvas to become a turbulent stream. Ever ready to take on something new, Imai would later move on to paintings depicting natural beauty following the Japanese tradition, but that too was a sign of the honesty of this artist who believed that an artist's painting is his own lifestyle.