Profile

Nara is one of the leading artists of Japan’s influential Neo Pop movement and is best known for his depictions of simultaneously cute and devilish children and animals. Informed by elements of popular culture ranging from manga and anime to punk rock, Nara fuses Japanese visual traditions and Western Modernism to create adorable but menacing characters that possess a startling emotional intensity. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984.

Nara was born and raised in a rural area of Japan and, as a child of working parents, he spent much of his time alone with only his imagination, comic books and family pets as company. The paintings, drawings and sculptures of seemingly innocent, wide-eyed children and dogs that have become his trademark are an attempt to capture this childhood sense of boredom and frustration and recapture the fierce independence natural to children. His paintings and drawings have a childlike simplicity that is reminiscent of traditional book illustration, but the works also have a restlessness and tension that is influenced, in part, by Nara’s love of punk rock, and is reinforced with such titles as The Girl with the Knife in Her Side (1991), Silent Violence (1998), Neurotic to the Bone (1999) and There is Nothing (2000).


His paintings evolved until his subject-matter was reduced to its essentials—simplified child and animal figures, with piercing gazes, staring out at the viewer from an otherwise empty canvas. His sculptures, usually made out of fiberglass, share this same economy of form. The influence of American cartoons, including the animation of Warner Bros and Walt Disney, as well as Japanese comics (manga) and animated television shows (anime), such as Gigantor and Speed Racer, is often cited in discussions of his work. However, Nara is a skilled and sensitive painter, who was also greatly influenced by the tranquil palette, classic balance and the space-consuming figures in paintings by such pre-Renaissance masters as Giotto. As one of Japan’s most popular contemporary artists, his works are shown in important galleries and museums around the world, but they can also be seen, and purchased, on t-shirts, postcards, CD covers, skateboards and even yo-yos.
Dates

Born 1959, Hirosaki, Amori, Japan

Lives and works in Tochigi, Japan

Education

1987, Graduate School of Aichi Prefectual University of Art, M.A.

1988–1993, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany

1993, Completed Meisterschuler from A.R. Penk

Recent Solo Exhibitions

2014

Yoshitomo Nara, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, March 1–April 12, 2014.

2013

Yoshitomo Nara, Pace Gallery, 534 West 25th Street, New York, May 10–June 29, 2013. (Catalogue)

2012

Yoshitomo Nara: The Little Little House in The Blue Woods, Towada Art Center, Aomori, September 22, 2012–January 14, 2013.

Yoshitomo Nara: a bit like you and me…, Yokohama Museum of Art, Kanagawa, July 14–September 23, 2012. Traveled to: Aomori Museum of Art, October 6, 2012–January 14, 2013; Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, January 26–April 14, 2013. (Catalogue)

2011

Print Works, Roppongi Hills Art & Design Store Gallery, Tokyo, February 17–March 21, 2011.

2010

Yoshitomo Nara: New Editions, Pace Prints, New York, October 27–December 4, 2010.

Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, Asia Society Museum, New York, September 9, 2010–January 2, 2010. (Catalogue)

Ceramic Works, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, May 15–June 19, 2010. (Catalogue)