Kitasono Katue
03 Aug - 01 Dec 2013
Kitasono Katue
La Disparition d’Honoré Subrac (オノレ・シュウブラック氏の減形) (1960)
gelatin silver print
21 1/16 x 17 3/8 in. (53.5 x 44.1 cm).
Collection of John Solt.
© Hashimoto Sumiko
La Disparition d’Honoré Subrac (オノレ・シュウブラック氏の減形) (1960)
gelatin silver print
21 1/16 x 17 3/8 in. (53.5 x 44.1 cm).
Collection of John Solt.
© Hashimoto Sumiko
KITASONO KATUE
Surrealist Poet
3 August – 1 December 2013
Kitasono Katue (1902–1978) was the best known Japanese poet-artist in Europe and the US during the middle half of the 20th century. This is the first solo exhibit of his art outside Japan. At the beginning of his career, Kitasono hoped to be a painter, but immediately gained notice instead for his avant-garde poetry. Active from the mid-1920s as a pioneering avant-garde spirit, he made a priority of finding common ground with poets, artists and writers in Europe and the Americas. First entranced by Dadaism and Surrealism, he also thoroughly absorbed the ideas of Futurism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. His poems were often published in poetry and visual art journals, and he served as an editor and graphic designer for some of these, including the journal VOU, published from 1935 to 1940, and then again from 1945 to 1978, ceasing at Kitasono’s death. Kitasono edited and designed more than 500 magazines and poetry books during his life, and created numerous covers for novels, trade journals and commercial magazines. Plastic Poems, which fit in a category more broadly referred to as visual poetry, adorned many of his book covers; Kitasono began to produce Plastic Poetry after being inspired by the photographs done by members of the VOU group, principally Yamamoto Kansuke (1914-1987), whose finely conceived surrealistic work was often published in the magazine. In the last twelve years of his life, Kitasono continued to experiment with the limitless field of visual poetry, maintaining the clean form and finely conceived pairings of images seen in his earliest successful text poems.
Surrealist Poet
3 August – 1 December 2013
Kitasono Katue (1902–1978) was the best known Japanese poet-artist in Europe and the US during the middle half of the 20th century. This is the first solo exhibit of his art outside Japan. At the beginning of his career, Kitasono hoped to be a painter, but immediately gained notice instead for his avant-garde poetry. Active from the mid-1920s as a pioneering avant-garde spirit, he made a priority of finding common ground with poets, artists and writers in Europe and the Americas. First entranced by Dadaism and Surrealism, he also thoroughly absorbed the ideas of Futurism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. His poems were often published in poetry and visual art journals, and he served as an editor and graphic designer for some of these, including the journal VOU, published from 1935 to 1940, and then again from 1945 to 1978, ceasing at Kitasono’s death. Kitasono edited and designed more than 500 magazines and poetry books during his life, and created numerous covers for novels, trade journals and commercial magazines. Plastic Poems, which fit in a category more broadly referred to as visual poetry, adorned many of his book covers; Kitasono began to produce Plastic Poetry after being inspired by the photographs done by members of the VOU group, principally Yamamoto Kansuke (1914-1987), whose finely conceived surrealistic work was often published in the magazine. In the last twelve years of his life, Kitasono continued to experiment with the limitless field of visual poetry, maintaining the clean form and finely conceived pairings of images seen in his earliest successful text poems.