Kawabata was born on March 22, 1911, in Kasuga-chō, Koishikawa Ward, Tokyo.[1] His father, Moshō Kawabata, was a Japanese-style painter and his grandfather, Gyokushō Kawabata, was a master painter of the Maruyama School.[4]: 18 Despite his family's history of working in Japanese-style media, in April 1929, he enrolled in the oil painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Takeji Fujishima. One of Kawabata’s classmates was Taro Okamoto, but he left for France in the third term of his first year.[4]: 18 Kawabata graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1934, his work was selected for the Bunten exhibition in 1936, and in 1939 he became a Kōfūkai (光風会) member.[1] In August of the same year, he left for Europe. Soon after his arrival in Paris he was ordered to leave the country due to the outbreak of World War II. Initially he fled to New York, but after few months, Kawabata returned to France again. He then moved to Italy due to the escalation of the war, but when Italy also joined World War II he returned to Japan in September 1941.[1]
War painting (1941–1945)
Shortly after Kawabata's return from Europe, Japan was plunged into the Pacific War. Like many other artists, Kawabata was involved in producing war paintings. Kawabata’s war paintings were exhibited at the 1st Greater East Asian War Art Exhibition (大東亜戦争美術展) in 1942 and the 1st Army Art Exhibition (陸軍美術展) in 1943.[2]: 151 Several of Kawabata’s war paintings are in the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo on indefinite loan from the United States.[6][7]
Postwar Japan (1945–1958)
After the war, from 1950 to 1955, Kawabata became a professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo, and during this time participated in the formation of an art group known as the New Creation Society (Shinseisaku Kyōkai; 新制作協会).[1][3]: 4 In 1951, he was selected to represent Japan at the inaugural São Paulo Biennale. The notable Japanese critic Atsuo Imaizumi acclaimed Kawabata as "the first full-fledged international modern artist" produced by Japan.[3]: 4 In 1953, together with Saburo Hasegawa, Jiro Yoshihara, Takeo Yamaguchi and others, Kawabata formed the Japan Abstract Art Club (日本アブストラクト・アート・クラブ).[1] ln the 1950s he began to move away from figurative representation and to search for dynamic, abstract expression.[1]
American years (1958–1994)
In September 1958, Kawabata moved to the US and settled in New York, and the following month his Rhythm Brown (1958) received Honorable Mention at the 2nd Guggenheim International Award.[8] In 1959, Kawabata was appointed as a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.[9] Kawabata held his first New York solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1960, forming an association which has continued ever since, with almost yearly exhibitions of his work.[3]: 4 At the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962, Kawabata exhibited his works at the Japan Pavilion (commissioner: Atsuo Imaizumi) alongside that of four other artists (Kinuko Emi, Kumi Sugai, Tadashi Sugimata, and Ryōkichi Mukai).[10] At the Venice Biennale, Kawabata exhibited eight works, including Vivid Red (1961), which is characterised by calligraphic brushwork and intense colours.[10] Through the limited colour contrast of red and white, Vivid Red marked the completion of Kawabata's abstraction with powerful strokes.[11]: 126 In the 1950s, Kawabata’s work was influenced by Abstract Expressionism that swept the New York art scene at that time, but from the end of the 1960s his work developed into abstract paintings that emphasised colour fields and hard-edge geometric forms.[1] Through the 1970s, Kawabata pursued abstraction, in which colour fields overlap in clear and simplified forms, such as diamonds, ellipses and origami-like shapes.[11]: 126 The exhibition catalogue of his retrospective, held at the Everson Museum of Art in New York in 1974, interpreted: "Kawabata has consistently sought and won a powerfully individual mode of expression with lyrical color forms in space."[3]: 4 "'I was too Westernized when I was a schoolboy,' he once said, 'Now I often think of my deep tradition. Then I try to produce something that is purely mine. I fight the traditions.' This strength of purpose is evident in his work and has won the respect of noted critics both in the United States and in Japan."[3]: 4
1983 Tokyo Gallery in London: Juda Rowan Gallery’s Selection from Tokyo Gallery: Minoru Kawabata, Lee U-fan, Yoshishige Saito, Juda Rowan Gallery, London
Everson Museum of Art, ed. Kawabata, exh. cat., Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1974.[3]
Harada, Osamu, and Shintani Masahiro, Nyūyōku no kawabata minoru = Kawabata in New York, Tokyo: Kōjī honpo, 1992.[9]
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and Ohara Museum of Art, eds. Zaibei 35-nen kokō no kiseki: Kawabata Minoru ten = Minoru Kawabata, exh. cat., Kyoto: National Museum of Modern Art, Kurashiki: Ohara Museum of Art, 1992.[4]
Ono, Fuyuki, ed. Kawabata Minoru: Michiyuku kaiga = Minoru Kawabata: Form Fullness, Tokyo: Otsuka Fine Art, 2020.[2]
Yokosuka Museum of Art, and Kudō Kasumi, eds. Seitan 100-nen Kawabata Minoru ten: Tōkyō—nyūyōku = Minoru Kawabata, exh. cat., Yokosuka: Yokosuka Museum of Art, 2011.[5]
^ abcdeOno, Fuyuki, ed. (2020). Kawabata Minoru: Michiyuku kaiga = Minoru Kawabata: Form Fullness. Tokyo: Otsuka Fine Art.
^ abcdefgEverson Museum of Art, ed. (1974). Kawabata. Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art.
^ abcdefThe National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Ohara Museum of Art, eds. (1992). Zaibei 35-nen kokō no kiseki: Kawabata Minoru ten = Minoru Kawabata. Kyoto and Kurashiki: National Museum of Modern Art and Ohara Museum of Art.
^ abcYokosuka Museum of Art; Kudō, Kasumi, eds. (2011). Seitan 100-nen Kawabata Minoru ten: Tōkyō—nyūyōku = Minoru Kawabata. Yokosuka: Yokosuka Museum of Art.
^ abcThe Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; The Museum of Art, Ehime, eds. (2001). Aru korekutā ga mita sengo nihon bijutsu = Through a Collector's Eye: Japanese Art after 1945. Translated by Anderson, Stanley N. Gunma and Ehime: The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Art.
