Kazuo Yagi (1918-1979)
Pair of bowls
Glazed ceramic
Signed beneath each base
Model created circa 1960
H 5 × Ø 5,5 cm
Note: With signed wooden boxes.
Biography:
Graduated in 1937 from the Kyoto City School of Art
and Craft, sculpture section. Member of the Japan
Ceramic Sculpture Association from 1937 to 1946,
presided by sculptor Ichiga Numata, who had worked with Rodin. Member of the Progress Art
Association in 1939, Japanese entity inspired by Kandinsky, Surrealism, and Bauhaus. From 1946 to 1950, participated in the Nihon Bijutsu Tenrankai, official salons, created the Young Pottery-makers’ Collective.
Co-founder in 1948, with Osamu Suzuki, Hikaru
Yamada, Yoshisuke Matsui and Tetsuo Kano, of
Sodeisha, the 'Crawling through Mud Association',
group of avant-garde Japanese ceramicists. Founder of the Contemporary Art Discussion Group in 1952. Co-founder in 1962 with Hikaru Yamada of the Mon Kõbõ, the 'Corner
Workshop'.
Exhibitions (other models by the artist):
- 'La Céramique Japonaise Contemporaine', Musée
Cernuschi, 1950, Paris, France
- 'Japanese Household Objects', MoMA, 1951, New
York, USA
- 'The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture',
MoMA, 1957, New York, and San Francisco
Museum of Art, 1957, San Francisco, USA
- FIAC, Grand-Palais, 1978, Paris, France
- 'Yagi Kazuo', Kyoto National Museum of Modern
Art, 1981, Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art,
Japan
- 'Hatsudõsuru Gendai no Kõgei 1945-1970', Kyoto
City Museum, 1988, Kyoto, Japan
- 'Sengo Nihon no Zen'ei Bijutsu', Yokohama
Museum of Art, 1994, Yokohama, Japan
- 'Crafts in everyday life in the 1950s and 1960s,'
National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 1995,
Tokyo, Japan
- 'Yagi Kazuo, A Retrospective', Freer Gallery of
Art, National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Tokyo
Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, 2004, Japan
- 'Birds of Dawn: Pioneers of Japan’s Sodeisha
Ceramic Movement', Joan B Mirviss Ltd, 2011,
New York, USA
Collections (other models by the artist):
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
- MoMA, New York, USA
- Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San
Francisco, USA
- Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom
