Sekine Yoshio, Abacus (Work 174)

Sekine Yoshio, (1922–1989).

Abacus (Work 174).

Height: 33.5 centimetres, 13 1/4 inches.
Width: 24.5 centimetres, 9 5/8 inches.

Signed and dated on the verso: February 20, 1968.

Sekine Yoshio was born in Wakayama Prefecture, and studied under Nakamura Makoto. Sekine met the painter Yoshihara Jiro through the Jiyu Bijutsu Kyoukai (Free Artists’ Association) and he later became one of the co-founders of Yoshihara’s avant-garde Gutai Art Association in 1954, although he left five years later, dissatisfied with the group’s artistic direction.

Sekine participated in the 7th Yomiuri Independent Exhibition in 1955. In 1958, his work was selected for an exhibition curated by the French art critic Michel Tapié (see also page 18), The International Art of a New Era: Informel and Gutai, which visited several cities in Japan. At the 15th Yomiuri Independent Exhibition in 1963, Sekine presented a painting of an abacus for the first time.

Although his work also featured other everyday subjects – including a series dedicated to gates and another to freight cars – the abacus became his most frequently recurring motif, presented in a variety of different configurations and colour schemes, creating abstract geometrical arrangements that blurred the line between the concrete (gutai) and illusion.

For some works, the configuration of beads also indicated the completion date. In the painting shown here, the vertical column of beads in the centre represents the number six, and the column on the right represents eight, which together correspond to the year it was painted.

Sekine received the Mainichi Art Award in 1952. Some of his other notable exhibitions included Trends in Contemporary Art: Paintings and Sculptures (National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 1964), the 2nd Nagoka Contemporary Art Museum Award Exhibition (Nagaoka-shi, Niigata, 1965) and The 1960s: A Decade of Change in Contemporary Japanese Art (which opened in 1981 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, then travelled to Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art).

Sekine’s work are now in the permanent collections of numerous museums worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagoya; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C.; and the British Museum.

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance