Takesada Matsutani
Guest at Moviment
Takesada Matsutani is a Japanese painter, engraver and installation artist.
A member of the second generation of Gutai avant-garde artists, Takesada Matsutani is renowned for his emblematic use of vinyl adhesive and lead pencil, his sensual bulb-like shapes and monumental canvasses of crayon streams.
His works feature in the Centre Pompidou and National Institute for Art History (INHA) collections in Paris, the National Museum of Art in Tokyo, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among others.
Matsutani lives and works between Paris and Nishinomiya in Japan. In 2015, he launched the Shoen Foundation with his wife, Kate Van Houten. .
"Yes, in the end, I hope I’ve stayed true to the Gutai motto to constantly seek 'that which has never been done', and to the Gutai principle of dialogue with matter, leaving things to chance and spontaneity."*
*Valérie Douniaux and Takesada Matsutani, "Interview with Takesada Matsutani", Perspective, 1 | 2020, p. 111-124
© Archives Takesada Matsutani
Takesada Matsutani
Stream: the course of time
Visual arts Exhibition, performance
In the 1970s, Japanese artist Takesada Matsutani, who emerged from the Gutai movement, was best known for his paintings incorporating thick bulges, bubbles and folds of vinyl adhesive dripped on the canvas. With the Stream series, he adopted a new approach, embracing the philosophy of Zen: the infinite repetition of small pencil strokes on vast surfaces is like an act of contemplation that is very simple, yet remarkable in its persistence and ability to stretch time.
Takesada Matsutani was the subject of a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2019.
