Bird, White Brushmark Pattern
Yagi Kazuo 1918-1979
Yagi Kazuo was born in Kyoto , the son of Yago Issō, a potter of traditional idioms, was a 20th century Japan’s most important avant-garde ceramic artist. He had a keen sense of beauty and witty intelligence with broad interest in poetry, music and photography. Yagi together with others formed an avant-garde ceramic movement called Sōdeisha , ‘Crawling through Mud Association’ in 1948 , embarking on an exploration of abstract , sculptural ceramics. His epoch-making work, Mr. Samsa’s Walk (1954), discarded the form of a thrown vessel with decision ‘to close the mouth of the vessel’, developing a new genre called "Objét-yaki" –neither pure sculpture nor vessel but objét. He continued exploring the power of form in unglazed stoneware and highly conceptual ‘Kokutō’, black ware. Yagi also excelled in functional pots. His revolutionary creation overturned the classical tradition of ceramics and opened new paths for clay artists in Japan.
w60.7×d18.0×h46.0 cm
1969
Keichitsu no Tsubo Pot, The day on which hibernating insects awake
w16.0×d12.4×h20.4 cm
Figure, Bronze
w19.6×h21.4 cm
1969
c.1971