Toshimitsu Imai is an artist born in Kyoto in 1928. His pictorial work approaches a kind of abstraction with a distinct Japanese sensibility. In 1948 he entered the Academy of Arts in Tokyo. In 1951 he received the Kansai-Shinseisaku award and in 1952 he received the prize of 15th Salone Shinseisaku. The following year he moved to Paris and enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Sorbonne, where he studied medieval history and philosophy. In 1953 and 1954 he exhibited at the Salon de l'Art Sacré. Until then, Imai's artistic style remained close to Fauvism, turned toward the abstract with the presence of figurative motifs and texts. In 1956 he organized a group exhibition in Japan with Tapié, Sam Francis and Georges Mathieu, which raises the interest for the Art Informel. He obtained several international successes, such as the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1953 and the Venice Biennale in 1960. In 1962 he obtained the prize of the 5th Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition and the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo acquired some works. In 1982 he exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and in 1984 founded the Association grouping the Japanese contemporary artists.
Untitled, created in 1958, exemplifies the artist's departure from figurative painting to pure abstraction. The artist releases his inner feelings and reveals the latent energy in creation in the universe through layers of thick paint and expressive brushstrokes. When Western abstract art prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, artists from the East living in the context of a foreign culture had to ponder how to find a way out and break through in their own culture. Toshimitsu Imai returns to traditional Japanese art and visual culture, integrating East and West to initiate a powerful and profound form of abstract expression. The weighty streak of black paint on top of the irregular crisscrossing lines in Untitled is akin to the twisted roots of big pine and cypress trees, or that of old plum trees painted in the style of Kano School in which sturdy lines are used. Kano School in Shogunate period in Japan demonstrated the power and arrogance of the Shogun by drawing symbolic subjects with robust brushstrokes on screens with gold foil. In Untitled, concrete objects are transformed into lines and colours, implying unlimited energy and emotions.