Work 作品

Saburo Murakami was born in Kobe in June 1925. He entered Kwansei Gakuin University preliminary course at age 18 and began studying oil painting. After World War II, in 1949, he began showing with the "Shinseisaku Art Society" (New Creation Association) and around 1950 started teaching art at an elementary school. In 1952 he participated in founding "Group Zero-Kai", an avant-garde group within "Shinseisaku", with Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, and Akira Kanayama. During a two-person show with Kazuo Shiraga in June of the next year, 1953, he met Jiro Yoshihara for the first time. In 1955 he and Shiraga joined the "Gutai Art Association" organized by Yoshihara, and he remained an active member of the group until the seventies. In the early years of the "Gutai" movement, its members carried out a wide variety of experimental art activities. Murakami's performances and installations, exemplified by his famous work known as "breaking through paper screens"，were remarkable for their conceptual clarity and simplicity. In many ways, the paintings he made during the fifties and sixties continued to show the same qualities. Characterized by high tension and spontaneity, his painting practice was founded on a remarkable combination of physicality and spirituality. Murakami's work always contains moments that transcend the boundaries of painting, and his extremely interesting approach makes the viewer aware of his ambivalent feelings toward painting.