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Lot Essay
Painted in 1962, T 51 radiates an explosive energy, a sense of velocity, and a fiery crimson amidst surging whites and blacks, as it channels Kazuo Shiraga’s profound, unmediated vision of life. A pivotal work in the artist’s career, it has been treasured in the collection of gallerist Rodolphe Stadler’s family for more than sixty years. In the same year as this work was created, Stadler presented Shiraga’s first solo exhibition in Europe in his Paris gallery, making Shiraga the first Gutai artist invited to exhibit in Europe. This moment signaled Gutai’s transcending borders and entering the global discourse of postwar abstract art and action painting.
T 51 was created in the artist’s prime years between 1959 and 1962 — a period marked by his transition from paper to the sturdier medium of canvas. During this period, Shiraga mastered the technique of painting with his feet and achieved an impeccable balance between colour, texture, and movement. The year 1962 marked the completion of this work, and the beginning of the artist’s three-decade-long collaboration with Galerie Stadler. A highly influential figure in the Paris art world, Stadler represented key pioneer artists in postwar contemporary art such as Lucio Fontana and Karel Appel. For more than six decades, T 51 has remained quietly preserved in the Stadler family collection. It is a testament both to the artist’s creativity at his peak and to the historic moment when Gutai transcended borders and stepped onto the world stage.
In The Gutai Manifesto, founder Jiro Yoshihara declared: “Gutai Art does not alter matter. Gutai Art imparts life to matter. Gutai Art does not distort matter.” Shiraga embodied this ideal with incredible intensity. His work resonates with his early experiences in judo and sumo, transforming the physical vitality and spiritual power of budo, the way of the warrior, into a language of painting. With his feet as his brush, he ran and slid across the canvas, leaving unrepeatable traces of weight and velocity. He infused the canvas and paint with life itself, allowing the work to reveal, through its dynamic collisions, a rhythm and freedom born of the unison between artist and medium.
Heavy pigments, layered in flowing forms, crystallise into imprints of the artist’s body and movement. T 51 evokes a battle stilled in time: the searing crimson symbolises blood and energy, while the black and white brushstrokes carve out speed and order. Each trace embodies the paradox of chance and inevitability. This tension between chance and control echoes Gutai’s notion of subjective autonomy—using the body as the brush, the artist turns spirit into traces of action, letting the work pulse with its natural rhythm and become a direct extension of the artist’s existence.
T 51 was created in the artist’s prime years between 1959 and 1962 — a period marked by his transition from paper to the sturdier medium of canvas. During this period, Shiraga mastered the technique of painting with his feet and achieved an impeccable balance between colour, texture, and movement. The year 1962 marked the completion of this work, and the beginning of the artist’s three-decade-long collaboration with Galerie Stadler. A highly influential figure in the Paris art world, Stadler represented key pioneer artists in postwar contemporary art such as Lucio Fontana and Karel Appel. For more than six decades, T 51 has remained quietly preserved in the Stadler family collection. It is a testament both to the artist’s creativity at his peak and to the historic moment when Gutai transcended borders and stepped onto the world stage.
In The Gutai Manifesto, founder Jiro Yoshihara declared: “Gutai Art does not alter matter. Gutai Art imparts life to matter. Gutai Art does not distort matter.” Shiraga embodied this ideal with incredible intensity. His work resonates with his early experiences in judo and sumo, transforming the physical vitality and spiritual power of budo, the way of the warrior, into a language of painting. With his feet as his brush, he ran and slid across the canvas, leaving unrepeatable traces of weight and velocity. He infused the canvas and paint with life itself, allowing the work to reveal, through its dynamic collisions, a rhythm and freedom born of the unison between artist and medium.
Heavy pigments, layered in flowing forms, crystallise into imprints of the artist’s body and movement. T 51 evokes a battle stilled in time: the searing crimson symbolises blood and energy, while the black and white brushstrokes carve out speed and order. Each trace embodies the paradox of chance and inevitability. This tension between chance and control echoes Gutai’s notion of subjective autonomy—using the body as the brush, the artist turns spirit into traces of action, letting the work pulse with its natural rhythm and become a direct extension of the artist’s existence.