Gutai
Under construction
The artist with Jiro Yoshihara, Osaka 1964.
Paul was first introduced to Gutai in 1957 by the French entrepreneur Michel Tapié during the lead-up to his own one-person show at Galerie Stadler in Paris (March 19 to April 13, 1957). The excited Tapié, who had just learned of the group from Hisao Domoto, traveled to Japan a few months later, and arranged for the group to show in New York at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1958, where Jenkins first met Jiro Yoshihara, the group's leader. At that time, Yoshihara extended an invitation to Jenkins to visit Japan. Six years later, Jenkins and his then wife, artist Alice Baber, became artists in residence at the Gutai Pinocotheca, the group's newly established museum space in Osaka. While in Japan, Jenkins showed at the Gutai Pinacotheca and at Tokyo Gallery, spent time working with Gutai members, and visited their studios (the Motonaga in his collection is inscribed "Nice meeting with Mr. Paul Jenkins at my studio on the 13th Nov. '64.") The paintings in the Jenkins collection were given to the artist in exchange for his own works as an act of friendship. As Jenkins recounts of the time they spent together, they were "under each other's spell."
Ming Tiampo
Exhibition catalogue
"Under Each Other's Spell": Gutai and New York
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center
July 30-October 17, 2009
Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, New Jersey City University
October 22-December 16, 2009
UB Anderson Gallery, State University of New York at Buffalo
April 10-August 22, 2010
In relation to the exhibition
GUTAI: SPLENDID PLAYGROUND
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York February 15 - May 8, 2013
"GUTAI: A 'Concrete' Discussion of Transnationalism." A symposium at the Guggenheim Museum featuring leading scholars in the field. Parcipants: Paul Jenkins, Alexandra Munroe, Ming Tiampo, Judith Rodenbeck and Reiko Tomii. Wednesday, November 18, 2009.
Exhibition website
Interior spread from Gutai Journal No. 8, Peinture Informelle, September 29, 1957
Reproduced Paul Jenkins oil on canvas, Anaconda 1956.
Photographs
Gutai Group Exibition, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York 1958
Gutai members in discussion with Paul Jenkins
Paul Jenkins with Maekawa Tsuyoshi, Yoshida Minoru and Shiraga Kazuo
Paul Jenkins working at the Gutai Pinacotheca,
with Yoshihara Jiro
and other photographs at the Gutai Pinacotheca, including Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage in 1964, courtesy Estate of Paul Jenkins.
top