Takeshi Kawashima American-Japanese, b. 1930

Takeshi Kawashima has created groundbreaking, culturally-invigorating paintings since the 1960s, blending his native Japanese culture with the onset of the Color Field, Minimalism, and Pop movements within the United States. Immigrating from Tokyo to New York in 1963, his practice reflects the divisive yet liberating components of assimilation, eradicating the basis of cultural barriers through a coherent visual language. Organized through a loose, grid-like structure, he adorns his paintings with a series of pictographs, contorting their usage as symbols when focalized individually. His stark aesthetic decisions, with the contrast of juxtaposing hues, invoke a decorative effect that is heavily inspired by the Japanese coat of arms. Kawashima’s large-scale works culminate as a reflection on the nature of semiotics, reducing the canvas to the symbolic convolution distilled in its surface.

Takeshi Kawashima (b. 1930, Takamastu, Kagawa) began his academic career by attending the School of Fine Art in Musashino, Tokyo in 1955. After graduating, he began teaching at the Yoyogi Art School until displaying his work at a series of exhibits across Tokyo. Kawashima has showcased in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Hannah-Kent Gallery in New York, NY, Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York, NY, Yamaso Art Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, Kagawa Prefectural Culture Museum in Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan, and Mitchell Algus Gallery, in New York.

His works are in the permanent collections of numerous private and public institutions, including the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. In addition, Kawashima is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the Daniel Schnakenberg Scholarship (1965) and the Silvermine Award (1967). He currently lives and works in Naoshima, Japan.