Frieze Masters 2017

Rediscovered work from the estate of Gutai artist, Minoru Onoda, will be shown for the first time outside Japan at Frieze Masters this year.Onoda was an important figure in the third generation of the Gutai Group, and this solo display of his paintings from the 1960s to the 1980s is drawn exclusively from his family estate, which is represented by the Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie.

Minoru Onoda was invited to join the Gutai group in 1965 after his participation in the 3rd International Exhibition for Young Artists in Paris (1964). He was one of the youngest members of the group and became a regular exhibitor in their annual exhibitions in Japan between 1965 and 1972. Onoda’s work was included in the two key survey exhibitions, Gutai: The Spirit of an Era’ at the National Art Center Tokyo, 2012, and The Guggenheim Museum’s ‘Gutai: Splendid Playground,’ 2013.

From the early 1960s, after he had left art school, and in reaction to the type of ‘Art Informel’ where ‘all paintings looked like walls’, Onoda began to experiment with newly available materials (synthetic paint and wood glue) and covered his paintings with arrangements of blue and black dots to create optical illusions and movement. These blossom into meticulous, multi coloured, biomorphic dot paintings which he called ‘sky dreams’. With these swirling, almost psychedelic paintings Onoda explored the ideas of multiplication and mass production which he described in his manifesto, ‘Paintings of Proliferation’ (1961).

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