Born in Kyoto in 1928, Toshimitsu Imaï was Japan’s most important artist working in Informal art. His travels and his network helped him make a significant contribution to the spread of European abstraction in Japan.
The influence of Informel is clearly evident in the 18-panel Formation Stream which Imaï originally painted for a restaurant in Tokyo. The painting is the largest in the Reinhard Ernst collection and spans almost 21 metres across all the individual panels. The work also pays no heed to classical principles of form and rules of composition. Imaï abandoned both the conventional figure-ground relationship and the brush and began throwing, pouring and layering paint with a painting knife as an expression of unbridled spontaneity. Gestures, beads of colour and ridges wind and cut through layers of paint that seem as if they have melted. They guide us through a painting reminiscent of the origin of the solar system.
Originally located in a restaurant in Tokyo
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Shigeru Tokota Inc., Tokyo, 2011
Born in Kyoto in 1928, Toshimitsu Imaï was Japan’s most important artist working in Informal art. Following his first exhibition in Japan, he moved to Paris in the spring of 1952 where he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Sorbonne to study art, medieval history and philosophy. His acquaintance with the French art critic Michel Tapié led him to begin studying Informel from 1955 onwards. Tapié became the source of the collective term for the beginnings of abstract art in France with his 1951 Paris exhibition ‘Signifiants de l’informel’. Imaï made a significant contribution to the communication of European abstraction in Japan with a trip he made in 1957 accompanied by Sam Francis, Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu. Together they were largely responsible for the rise of French Informel in Japan.
The influence of Informel is clearly evident in the 18-panel Formation Stream which Imaï originally painted for a restaurant in Tokyo. The painting spans almost 23 metres across all the individual panels. The work also pays no heed to classical principles of form and rules of composition. Imaï abandoned both the conventional figure-ground relationship and the brush and began throwing, pouring and layering paint with a painting knife as an expression of unbridled spontaneity. On a panoramic format, his painting is full of seas of embers and lava-like streams. Gestures, beads of colour and ridges wind and cut through layers of paint that seem as if they have melted. They guide us through a painting reminiscent of the origin of the solar system. From a distance, the palette appears sombre; bright reds emerge again and again in steady tides, while other hues shimmer through a subtly glossy varnish reminiscent of traditional Japanese ceramics.
