Katsumi Nakai
(Japanese/act. Milan, Italy, 1927-2013)

"Oggetto"

mixed media
signed en verso, affixed with "Galleria D'Arte Del Naviglio, Milan, Italy" label.
closed: 39" x 32", open: 74" x 32"

Provenance: Galleria D'Arte del Naviglio, Milan, Italy, 1972; Estate of Thomas B. Lemann, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Notes: Japanese visual artist Katsumi Nakai was one of the seven founding artists of the avant-garde group of abstract and informal art, Tekkeikai, active until the mid-1960s. In 1964, Nakai left Japan for Europe and ended up settling in Milan for the next several decades, returning to his home country in 1996. He was attracted to the "New Milanese School" and one of its most notable members, Luciano Fontana, fascinated by Fontana's idea of Spatialism: the concept of time and space as a part of canvas. Nakai held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice in 1965, as well as multiple exhibitions at Galleria del Naviglio, Milan which is where this work was exhibited and acquired.

"Oggetto", a prime example of the work he created in Italy, is a multi-colored wooden aperture which plays with pictorial surfaces, form, volume and exceeds the limits of the flat canvas. The painted, hinged planes take on sculptural dimensions, asking the audience to visually manipulate the work. Nakai's work is a crossroads between Eastern and Western artistic traditions, calling to mind Japanese origami as well as the shaped canvases of Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella.

Guido Ballo, the Milanese art critic called Nakai's works "Pictorial Object", describing its existence between sculpture and two-dimensional paintings.

PLEASE NOTE, CORRECT OPEN MEASUREMENTS ARE 74" x 32" Area of paint loss along edges, particularly visible in upper half; assorted small white areas and dark areas scattered across upper half; surface dirt visible in lower pink areas; surface marks along purple by hinges; horizontal surface marks along upper left edge.