Hi Steemit family!

Today I bring you another artist who takes as elements of artistic composition resources external to the basic use of canvas plus a brush, now we go to Japan to learn about the life of Kazuo Shiraga the artist of performance and action painting. Join me to learn a little about the life of this incredible artist.

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Kazuo Shiraga was born in Japan in 1924, is one of the most recognized artists in the Asian country, the beginning of his career was characterized by tireless creativity to compose his pieces, introduced performance as a technique to make his paintings, also incorporated action painting, two styles that were unknown in Japan.

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From 1952 he founded with other prominent Japanese artists the avant-garde movement called Zero-Kai that jealously defended his interests in generating a new, liberating art, the transformations to the paintings had as a principle the impulse inside each artist to express in the paintings what his interior indicated to him.

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In 1955 he joined the Gutai collective, a controversial collective that used irony and violence to express the post-war life that Japan went through after the atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Already by 1962 Shiraga was known in Europe and the rest of the world, the years of research were not in vain and his works, as well as techniques and postulates, were well received by the international critics, what but highlight of those criticisms was his imposing way of making performances for the creation of his works, usually painted with his bare feet immersing his feet in paint and then trace, this technique could be done thanks to a fastening on the ceiling that allowed him to jump at different points in the work, also known as pendulum painting.

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They had a very deep admiration for Pollock who had already ventured into this freestyle painting with jets of paint on the canvas.
His work titled dance in the dragon with two heads, literally dance on paper support with his feet painted, this ritual was performed intensely in most of his works and it was precise with the Gutai movement that this art was consecrated as action painting but to be performed live in front of crowds of people.

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Some of the things expressed by the Gutai collective were embodied in his manifesto where they express their wide admiration for the beauty of things that are damaged or obsolete an abstract way of analyzing the deteriorated that was the Japanese society and with art managed to embellish again the damaged.

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One of Gutai's similarities with other types of art such as informal art or abstract expressionism avoiding the use of psychological resources for the creation, opening new paths for the incorporation of the body within the works, another aspect no less important is the rescue of traditional Japanese arts such as writing.

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Both Kazuo Shiraga and active participation in various artistic movements impacted the new artistic generations in Japan, revaluing culture and denouncing war crimes committed by both past governments and foreign threats. Highly valuing universal culture as the only vehicle for liberation.