McCaffrey Fine Art is proud to present its second solo exhibition of the work of the late Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998). Featuring sculpture, painting, and drawing, this exhibition provides an opportunity to view Takamatsu’s unprecedented and diverse achievements.
Perhaps the most influential artist working in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s, Jiro Takamatsu altered the evolution of visual art in Japan as an artist, theorist, and teacher. As a cofounder of the legendary collective Hi Red Center in 1963, as the painter of shadows, and as a primary inspiration for Mono-Ha, Takamatsu dominated Japanese artistic discourse during those years. Though he is hardly known in the West, Takamatsu’s tentative peer group might include On Kawara (b. 1933), Eve Hesse (1936–1970), Richard Serra (b. 1939), James Turrell (b. 1943), and Richard Long (b. 1945).
McCaffrey Fine Art’s exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, and drawings dating from 1965 to 1973. This presentation of Takamatsu’s work would be incomprehensible without acknowledging the discourse and aesthetic precedent of Minimalism, as well as Takamatsu’s background in the Anti-Art and Neo-Dada movements. A contrarian by nature, he challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of sculptures fabricated from modular forms and paintings purged of representation in pursuit of truth to material.