YUICHI INOUE 1916-1985 JAPANESE INK CALLIGRAPHY ON PAPER. Image only size 54.5cm by 78.5cm. Sealed.

Shouting out aloud as he pressed his brush into the paper early each morning, forming his rugged kanji (Chinese ideograms) with a few dynamic strokes, tirelessly experimenting, ruthlessly destroying most of the day's work, then setting off patiently to teach at elementary school, Inoue YÅ«ichi (1916-1985) embodies the self-discipline and experimental spirit of Japan's early postwar decades.

He became an autonomous actor in the Tokyo art world in the early 1950s, just when it was at last possible to discover exciting new movements and styles that were developing outside Japan: action painting, abstract expressionism, and the work of such artists as Franz Kline, Mark Tobey, and Jackson Pollock. Inoue experimented for a time with total abandonment of the conventions of sho (calligraphy) but reconciled himself to its linguistic essence in time to create a masterpiece for the fourth São Paulo Biennale (1957). In the early 1960s his style diverged from the heady international modernism of the mid-1950s and took a direction that was more culturally specific, without in any way abandoning his uncompromisingly severe artistic quest.

Inoue's achievement above all rests on his success in straddling West and East, in combining two visual languages-sho and abstract expressionism-to convey deeply felt inner conflict and anguish. The strokes of his kanji, sometimes so thick as to be more mass than line, explode onto the paper with a primal, visceral energy that cries out for our total attention. Shunning the delicacy and grace conjured up by the word "calligraphy," he often left things to chance, his use of the brush producing spatterings of ink that came to rest at random, to dramatic effect.

His utterly eccentric, wonderfully sparse sho creates a new world where clarity of meaning and intensity of emotion are fused into an integral whole. Following a major retrospective exhibition held in Japan in 2016, collectors and institutions around the world are currently showing intense interest in his dynamic compositions.

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