Senkichiro Nasaka (B. 1923)

With its dynamic profusion of painterly marks, Untitled, 1958 is an early work by Japanese artist Senkichiro Nasaka, executed shortly after he graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts. A classmate of Kazuo Shiraga, and later married to the artist Yuro Nasaka, he became a member of the influential Gutai movement in 1965. His practice was both painterly and performative: for the group’s 1970 show at the Osaka world fair, he designed a long aluminium pole that snaked through the gallery space playing music – an iconic work restaged at the Guggenheim Museum’s 2013 exhibition Gutai: Splendid Playground. Untitled is emblematic of his early painterly language, informed by his interests in Japanese painting and European Art Informel, whilst simultaneously predating the kinetic, action-based approach that would come to be associated with Gutai.