A selection of Tanaami's Picasso's series.
During the pandemic, globally acclaimed Keiichi Tanaami found himself on the brink of utter boredom. What got him out of his funk was Picasso. Keiichi Tanaami is known for his monstrous, contemporary, downright psychedelic, and kaleidoscopic pieces. A master of silk screening, acrylic painting, collage, animation, and more, his art has countlessly whirled around the globe. Tanaami is considered the precursor of the Superflat movement. Being affected by the war and post-war Japan, many of these traumatic experiences appear in his art, whether it's air raids, explosions, or the bright flip-side of the 60s, creating an altogether enigmatic constitution of his dreams and memories. Exploring his past and present is an important piece of the puzzle that makes Tanaami, who transcribes these visions to be shared with the world. However, having a dry spell when everything you've ever known brakes suddenly is understandable. Unable to resume his projects and works, Tanaami turned to one of his most fond paintings by Picasso "Mother and Child" and created a replica. He realized he thoroughly enjoyed this process of mindless painting and based himself on this type of work to create a collection of over 400 Picasso-inspired paintings. Tanaami focused on a new canvas while repeating what he remembered from his last canvas, creating a sequence similar to "a game of Chinese whispers". Mizuki Khoury
Keiichi Tanaami (1936-2024) is looked upon as the forerunner of
Japanese Pop Art and is one of the country's most influential artists. Born in Tokyo as the son of a textile wholesaler, he was nine years old when he experienced the bombing of Tokyo towards the end of World
War II. He studied at the Musahino Art University, visited
Andy Warhol in New York in 1969, worked with both
Robert Rauschenberg and art critic
Michel Tapié during their travels to Japan, and designed record covers for Jefferson Airplane and The Monkees.
He maintained a successful career as an illustrator and a graphic designer throughout the 1960s and early '70s, and was appointed as the first artistic director of the Japanese edition of
Playboy magazine in 1975. With an infinite artistic appetite, Tanaami continued to work across all boundaries, embracing painting, sculpture, performance and film, as well as a professor on the Faculty of Information Design at the Kyoto University of Art and Design in Japan.
