Untitled 1966

Jiro Yoshihara created this painting with oil on canvas, typical materials for the mid-20th century. Yet Yoshihara was interested in something more radical than traditional painting. Notice how the black background is applied evenly and opaquely, while the white outline has a rough, almost accidental quality. Yoshihara was the leader of the Gutai group in Japan, who sought to move beyond the cool perfection of abstraction, and instead celebrate the gesture and the mark of the artist. The Gutai artists were adamant that materials should be allowed to 'live,' to find their own form. Here, you get the sense that Yoshihara has set the stage – black paint – then released his intuition to fill it, trusting in the expressive potential of a simple white line. By focusing on process and gesture, Yoshihara sought to collapse the distinction between art and action.