2020-07-29
A look at the collection: Yasuo Sumi, Work
The Japanese Gutai artist group occupies a special place in the Reinhard Ernst collection. In addition to European representatives of abstract art, Japanese works of art are also presented and placed in a dialogue with their European contemporaries.
Yasuo Sumi was part of Gutai from 1955 and experimented with various unusual painting tools, entirely in keeping with the group’s approach. He applied paint to the canvas using everyday objects such as a comb, but also tried to use vibrating motors to apply paint. The Japanese artist worked for more than four years on the painting that is now in the Reinhard Ernst Collection. In this case, he used a Japanese slide rule, known as a soroban, as a painting tool. The traces of individual wooden beads run clearly through the pastose paint and can be seen on the entire surface of the picture. The word soroban eventually became synonymous with Sumi’s technique of applying paint with various objects from everyday life.
The painter from Osaka lived from 1925 to 2015. In 1950, he completed a degree in economics in Osaka and then worked as a maths teacher. By chance, while painting with his artist friend Shōzō Shimamoto, he discovered that the slide rule was not only a useful working tool in the classroom but also left impressive trails of paint on the canvas.
Once he joined Gutai, Sumi presented his work regularly at the group’s exhibitions but also took part in numerous international shows in Europe and the United States.
