3.Oils, watercolours, collages, calligraphy, and more
Ikeda felt uncomfortable about the screening process performed by incumbent artist organisations, and actively participated in avantgarde groups such as Jitsuzaisha and the Demokrato Artists Association. Consequently, in parallel with printmaking, he was producing oil paintings in a variety of avantgarde styles including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.
Ningyo A (1996), executed in acrylics for a Tatsuhiko Shibusawa exhibition, was the final painting that Ikeda completed.
The watercolour With Beauty and Sorrow (1965) was produced for the shooting of With Beauty and Sorrow, a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda based on Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Beauty and Sadness. It was used for a scene where the artist played by Kaoru Yachigusa is painting, and Shinoda requested a painting something like one by Hieronymus Bosch, a Dutch painter renowned for his hellscapes and paintings of monsters. Ikeda produced a work of fantasy that, apart from its appearance in the movie, is presented in public for the first time. Tennyo-mugen (1990) is a powerful and striking work, a massive triptych collage that incorporates an uchikake—an ornate formal kimono—into each of three 260 cm tall and 182 cm wide panels. From his youth, Masuo Ikeda was a strong writer, and produced many calligraphic works in his later years. Some of them are presented in this section as part of the introduction of the artist’s less-familiar forms of visual expression.
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Sotatsu Sanka “Hevean”
lithograph on paper (four-panel folding screen） 1985 |
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