The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 by the Hyogo painter Jiro Yoshihara with a group of young painters who gathered under his direction. The idea was “don’t imitate others, make something that has never been done before”.
The group produced works in response to the new art movements that were taking place in the USA and Europe at the same time.
The Gutai Art Association (hereafter Gutai) were established in 1954. Gutai was strongly conscious of the idea of facing the material as it is (the concept of concretization), as stated in the Gutai Art Manifesto published in 1956.

In 1986, Gutai member Sadamasa Motonaga explained what kind of group Gutai was in a lecture he gave during the exhibition “Gutai: Action and Painting” at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, in the following words.

‘For example, let’s say there is a painting of an apple here. No matter how well this picture is painted, it will not be an edible apple. So it is not an apple, but an illusion.
What is a painting, then, is a substance made up of a chemical material called paint, a fabric called canvas and a material called wood.
Our group is always thinking about what we can do with this material.’

The young artists of Gutai have established their own unique and unprecedented methods of expression through their own trial and error and friendly competition under these new concepts.

This exhibition introduces the works of three artists of the second generation of Gutai, who joined the group around the time it switched direction to a focus on painting.