Exhibition Space 2 ＃The Day of Search (From 1970s to the first half of 1980s)

After completing the graduate school of Tokyo University of the Arts in 1971, he returned to his hometown, Sapporo in 1974.

After going back home, Hanada, who had tried geometric paintings ever since he was in school, worked on paintings with bright color surfaces composed of squares.

It is obvious that Hanada was influenced by the American postwar artists such as Barnett Newman(1905-1970) and others whom he was interested in at that time.

The work, Apron (1975) is 193.9cm long and 81.0cm wide, and its vertically long screen is divided into four by planes of colors.

Hanada describes this work as “Painting of the field” whose main theme is clear-cut color expression and material impression” using “Hard-edge-style” which composes planar forms and colors with sharp outlines.

This description can be rephrased as “the painting which pursued the process of planes of colors becoming “fields” as objects on flat surface, a form of painting.

The unique point is that he used names of familiar daily necessities as a title even though pursuing such a strict logic.

In this series, there are other works like Socks I (1974), Beret I (1974), and etc.

Around 1980, Hanada started to develop a series of “To Forest” which is completely different from previous works.

The work, To Forest No.1 (1982), has dark oil colors overpainted on the whole screen and his handwriting is wriggling and waving, which seems to erase the method of previous ascetic painting.

On the screen, seemingly looks pitch- black, subtle shade of colors created on the process of overpainting comes out and retrains silent impact coupled with the luster peculiar to the oil painting.

After the series of To Forest, he eventually started to draw lyric painting series of Moonlight Night.

Moonlight Night (1983-84) is Hanada’s imaginated scenary which was imaged from a street lined with popular trees on the grounds of Hokkaido University in Sapporo City.

In the shape of white oval standing on the right side of the screen Hanada himself? The stretching blue shadow lit by moonlight moves viewers to feel lonely, but somewhat warm.

“Moon” is Hanada’s favorite motif and it often appears on his works later.

For Hanada who challenged to compose screen with straight lines in 1970s, it was a great challenge to adopt the expression using curved lines and description of nature.

After this, he began to create his original pictorial expression in which abstract and concrete are blended together under the theme of his daily life and nature in Hokkaido.

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