Tomoshige Kusuno (Yubari, Japan 1935)
Tomoshige Kusuno is a draftsman, painter, visual artist, teacher and printmaker. He studied at the University of the Arts and was a member of the Avant-Garde Art Group in Tokyo, Japan, in the 1950s. He emigrated to Brazil in 1960 and settled in São Paulo. The following year, he took part in the 10th Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna. In 1962, he won awards at the Salão do Paraná in Curitiba and at the Salão do Grupo Seibi de Artistas Plásticos in São Paulo — at the latter, he won the grand prize in 1970, at its 14th edition. Also in the 1960s, he became close to artists associated with the new figuration tendencies and took part in the exhibitions Opinião 65, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ), and Propostas 65, at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (Faap).
He exhibited on several occasions at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC/USP), receiving awards at the Jovem Arte Contemporânea exhibition in 1967 and 1972. He taught drawing at Faap and at the Yuba rural community in Mirandópolis, São Paulo. From the 1990s, he took part in several group exhibitions, notably the Bienal Brasil Século XX in 1994 and the Exposição dos Pintores Nipo-Brasileiros Contemporâneos [Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters] in 1996, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp).
Critical Commentary
When he moved to São Paulo in 1960, Tomoshige Kusuno became associated with the neo-figurative tendencies, whose work aimed to comment critically on aspects of Brazilian reality. Through this connection, he took part in the exhibitions Opinião 65, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro - MAM/RJ, and Propostas 65, at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado - Faap. He worked with the language of the mass media, taking comic strips and news reports as references, in line with the proposals of the new figuration, while at the same time producing abstract paintings. In making his works, Kusuno uses various painting techniques, as well as drawing and the collage of objects directly onto the canvas.
In addition to these works, he creates objects. However, according to art historian Walter Zanini, they are in fact "essentially an expression of painting and drawing"¹ - this would be the case of Minúsculo e Maiúsculo [Lowercase and Uppercase], 1965, which resembles an open box turned upside down, with its lid flaps open. On the wood from which the work is made, Kusuno draws figures, geometric shapes and letters, overlapping or juxtaposing these elements, which fill the entire surface of the object.
Urban themes, such as the crowd and the city, recur in his work, present in several phases beyond the neo-figurative one. In the 1970s, Kusuno began producing works in which animal figures are treated realistically or merely suggested, with faces never defined, and human figures are placed in timeless, strange spaces, as in Amanhecer [Dawn], ca. 1970, and Ruído [Noise], 1977.
In the early 1980s, there are works bordering on abstraction - Eclipse, 1983, and Fôlego [Breath], 1986 - while others suggest the same timeless, strange atmosphere of the works of the previous decade. From then on, the artist turned definitively to the figure, this time with vigorous gestural brushstrokes in vibrant colors, resulting in a less objective handling than before, when his work was built with precise lines and brushstrokes.
Note
¹ ZANINI, Walter. História geral da arte no Brasil. São Paulo: Fundação Djalma Guimarães/ Instituto Walther Moreira Salles, 1983. 2v.
Critiques
"(...) Throughout the 1960s - acclimatized to São Paulo's urban creative environment and consciously seeking to integrate his ancestry with the opposite pole of his new living conditions - he first adopted the iconography and system of the new figuration, in drawing-collages obsessively recording the elements of our everyday life: comic strips, wars, the anesthesia of newspapers, screens uselessly spewing information, the idle accumulation of nothing. Later, his constructive leaning grew stronger, while explicit figuration was gradually replaced by symbolic syntheses or distant analogies of landscapes; around 1966, he began a series of works projecting two-dimensional painting into space, as if the canvas had been stuffed and filled from behind, through the addition of mold-structures on the surface of the support, covered with the same canvas on which the painting, by then pure formal and chromatic research, was laid. Along this path, in 1970 he produced some painting-objects in space, entirely abandoning the conventional canvas format and incorporating kinetic possibilities, with the viewer able to take a direct part in manipulating the movement contained in the work. In his most recent drawings, a blend of surrealist, hyperrealist and conceptual atmospheres predominates, returning to the subtleties of critical figuration, with more or less explicit references to Brazilian landscapes and circumstances (space and time)".
Roberto Pontual
PONTUAL, Roberto. Arte/ Brasil/ hoje: 50 anos depois. São Paulo: Collectio, 1973.
"Returning to painting as painting, that is, to color, after 20 years, is what Tomoshige now proposes in his endless confrontations with himself. (...) For eleven years he made the scratch of the hard pencil on the canvas - and that friction - a singular procedure of plastic construction. That has passed, just as long ago the times of avant-gardism in Japan passed (when they called him neo-Dada) and, already in Brazil, those of the reliefs in cracked plaster, the incorporation of objects, the large three-dimensional works, the silkscreens, all cycles revealing a research that always took part in the dynamics of current art, yet with strong resistance to consensus, which ended up isolating him from classificatory affiliations. (...) It is fundamentally the same artist that we find again, moving through different stages and open to new directions, as now, in the gesturality of his harsh, exalted acrylic colors that capture facts from memory, impressions from reading, from the TV screen and other observations of everyday reality, in truth manifestations that arouse his interest as a primordial idea of movement. Freed from the restraints of meticulous graphic line, he explodes in a counterproposal to his earlier attitude, in macro-gestures, bringing to his paintings a power of fine, shrewd reflection on what they represent and on the very form of representing, which respects the occasional accidents of the work. All this impulsiveness is preceded by a concentration typical of his philosophical mind, and reaches its final stage only as controlled spontaneity".
Walter Zanini
KUSUNO, Tomoshige. Tomoshige Kusuno. São Paulo: Montesanti Galleria, 1988.
Solo Exhibitions
1955 - Tokyo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Sanshodo
1958 - Tokyo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Faquetsudo
1959 - Tokyo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Bunque - Shunju
1963 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria São Luís
1964 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Galeria Goeldi
1965 - Montreal (Canada) - Solo, at Galeria Libre
1966 - Ottawa (Canada) - Solo, at Galeria Robertson
1966 - Washington (United States) - Solo, at Galeria Brazilian American Culture
1966 - Tokyo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Nihombashi
1966 - Sapporo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Tokeidai
1970 - Tokyo (Japan) - Solo, at Galeria Cadeau
1974 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Galeria Múltipla
1979 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Itaugaleria
1986 - São Paulo SP - Tomoshige Kusuno: Half a Century, at Galeria Paulo Klabin
1988 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Montesanti Galeria
1991 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Kramer Galeria de Arte
Group Exhibitions
1950 - Tokyo (Japan) - World Student Exhibition - Unesco
1950 - Tokyo (Japan) - Exhibition, at Museu Nacional de Tóquio
1955 - Tokyo (Japan) - Art and Avant-Garde Movement Group
1955 - Tokyo (Japan) - Exhibition, at Museu de Arte Municipal - Souzou Prize
1960 - São Paulo SP - 6th Grupo Seibi Visual Artists Salon, at Sociedade Paulista de Cultura Japonesa/SPCJ
1961 - São Paulo SP - 10th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia
1962 - São Paulo SP - Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at MAC/USP
1962 - Salvador BA - Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at MAM/BA
1962 - Curitiba PR - Paraná Salon, at Biblioteca Pública do Paraná - acquisition prize
1962 - São Paulo SP - Grupo Seibi Visual Artists Salon - silver medal
1963 - São Paulo SP - 12th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art, at Galeria Prestes Maia - honorable mention
1963 - São Paulo SP - 1st Young National Drawing Exhibition, at Faap
1963 - Belo Horizonte MG - Municipal Fine Arts Salon - first prize in drawing
1963 - São Paulo SP - 7th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1964 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 13th National Salon of Modern Art
1964 - Belo Horizonte MG - 1st Young National Drawing Exhibition, at MAP
1965 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Young National Drawing Exhibition, at MAC/USP
1965 - São Paulo SP - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAC/USP
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Esso Salon of Young Artists, at MAM/RJ
1965 - São Paulo SP - Proposals 65, at MAB-FAAP
1965 - São Paulo SP - 8th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1965 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinião 65, at MAM/RJ
1965 - São Paulo SP - Proposta 65, at Faap
1965 - Caracas (Venezuela) - American Painters and Paintings in the 1960's, at Museu de Belas Artes de Caracas
1965 - Cornell (United States) - American Painters and Paintings in the 1960's, at Museu Andrew D. White da Universidade de Cornell
1965 - Dallas (United States) - American Painters and Paintings in the 1960's, at Museum of Fine Arts de Dallas
1966 - São Paulo SP - Half a Century of New Art, at MAC/USP
1966 - New York (United States) - The Emergent Decade, at Museu Guggenheim
1966 - São Paulo SP - Japanese-Brazilian Artists, at MAC/USP
1967 - São Paulo SP - 1st Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP - small merit award
1967 - Campinas SP - 3rd Campinas Contemporary Art Salon, at MACC - small gold medal and silver medal para painting
1967 - São Paulo SP - 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1967 - Belo Horizonte MG - Municipal Fine Arts Salon - City Hall Grand Prize
1967 - São Paulo SP - Grupo Seibi Visual Artists Salon - special mention
1967 - Brasília DF - 4th Federal District Salon of Modern Art, at Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro
1967 - Curitiba PR - 24th Paraná Fine Arts Salon, at Biblioteca Pública do Paraná - 1st prize of drawing
1968 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP - special mention
1968 - São Paulo SP - 12th Grupo Seibi Visual Artists Salon - acquisition prize
1968 - Campo Grande MS - 28 Artists from the MAC/USP Collection, at Diário da Serra
1968 - Florianópolis SC - 1st National Visual Arts Exhibition, at Masc
1968 - Campinas SP - 4th Campinas Contemporary Art Salon, at MACC - acquisition prize
1969 - Porto Alegre RS - 2nd Young Contemporary Art, at Margs
1969 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 18th National Salon of Modern Art
1969 - Fortaleza CE - 28 Artists from the MAC/USP Collection, at Centro de Artes Visuais Raimundo Cela
1969 - São Paulo SP - General Panorama of Contemporary Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1970 - São Paulo SP - 4th Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP
1970 - São Paulo SP - 14th Grupo Seibi Visual Artists Salon - grand prize
1970 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th JB Art Summary
1970 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1970 - São Paulo SP - 4th Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP - acquisition prize
1971 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Japan Art Festival, at MAM/RJ
1971 - Antwerp (Belgium) - Antwerp Biennial
1972 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Multiplied Art, at Múltipla de Arte
1972 - São Paulo SP - 6th Young Contemporary Art, at MAC/USP
1973 - São Paulo SP - Art/Brazil/Today: 50 Years Later, at Galeria da Collectio
1974 - Campinas SP - 9th Campinas Contemporary Art Salon, at MACC
1974 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 50 Years of Modern Art in Brazil, at MAM/RJ
1974 - Geneva (Switzerland) - Contemporary Brazilian Printmakers, at Galeria Ziegler
1974 - Spain - Contemporary Brazilian Printmakers, at Museu de Belas Artes da Espanha
1975 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Communication According to Visual Artists
1976 - São Paulo SP - 8th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1977 - São Paulo SP - 14th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1977 - São Paulo SP - 9th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1978 - São Paulo SP - 3 Generations of Japanese-Brazilian Artists, at Galeria Arte Global
1978 - São Paulo SP - The Object in Art: Brazil in the 1960s, at MAB-FAAP
1979 - São Paulo SP - Mira Schendel, Tomoshige Kusuno, Marcelo Villares: Drawings and Paintings, at Nova Acrópole
1979 - São Paulo SP - 11th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1979 - Curitiba PR - 2nd Curitiba Annual Printmaking Show, at Centro de Criatividade
1980 - São Paulo SP - Masters of Lyrical Abstraction in Brazil, at Galeria Eugenie Villien
1981 - São Paulo SP - Art Research, at MAC/USP
1983 - São Paulo SP - Reinterpretation Project, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1983 - São Paulo SP - 17th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1984 - São Paulo SP - Xerox Art Brazil, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1984 - Ourinhos SP - Tribute to the Art of Printmaking in Brazil, at Itaugaleria
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinião 65, at Galeria de Arte Banerj
1985 - Penápolis SP - 6th Noroeste Visual Arts Salon, at Fepe. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Penápolis
1985 - São Paulo SP - Japanese Artists in the MAC Collection, at MAC/USP
1985 - São Paulo SP - Highlights of Brazilian Contemporary Art, at MAM/SP
1985 - São Paulo SP - 18th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, at Fundação Bienal
1985 - São Paulo SP - Art New Media/Multimedia: Brazil 70/80, at MAB-FAAP
1986 - São Paulo SP - The URBS as Seen by Eight Artists, at Galeria Montesanti Roesler
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st Christian Dior Contemporary Art Exhibition: Painting, at Paço Imperial
1986 - São Paulo SP - 17th Panorama of Current Brazilian Art, at MAM/SP
1987 - São Paulo SP - 20th Contemporary Art Exhibition, at Chapel Art Show
1988 - São Paulo SP - Juréia, at Sadalla Galeria de Arte
1988 - São Paulo SP - Life and Art of the Japanese in Brazil, at Masp
1988 - Brasília DF - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts
1988 - Manaus AM - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1988 - Belém PA - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at Fundação Romulo Maiorana
1988 - Recife PE - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at Fundação Joaquim Nabuco. Instituto de Cultura
1988 - São Paulo SP - 63/66 Figure and Object, at Galeria Millan
1988 - São Paulo SP - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at MAB-FAAP
1988 - Curitiba PR - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at MAC/PR
1988 - Porto Alegre RS - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at Margs
1989 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Heritage of Japan: Aspects of Japanese-Brazilian Visual Arts, at Museu Nacional de Belas Artes
1991 - São Paulo SP - Graphic Record: Original Lithographs, at Kramer Galeria de Arte
1991 - São Paulo SP - What Are You Doing Now, Generation 60?: Young Contemporary Art of the 1960s Revisited, at MAC/USP
1992 - Santo André SP - Lithography: Methods and Concepts, at Paço Municipal
1992 - São Paulo SP - The Seduction of Volumes: The Three-Dimensional Works of the MAC, at MAC/USP
1993 - João Pessoa PB - Woodcut: From Cordel to the Gallery, at Fundação Espaço Cultural da Paraíba
1993 - São Paulo SP - Luso-Japanese-Brazilian Exhibition, at MAB-FAAP
1994 - São Paulo SP - Woodcut: From Cordel to the Gallery, at Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo
1994 - São Paulo SP - Claudio Tozzi, Ivald Granato, Cleber Machado, Maurício Nogueira Lima, Rubens Gerchman, Siron Franco and Tomoshige Kusuno, at A Hebraica
1994 - São Paulo SP - Bienal Brasil Século XX
1995 - São Paulo SP - Brazil Japan Art, at Fundação Mokiti Okada M.O.A.
1995 - São Paulo SP - Arte Atual Brasil Project, at Renato Magalhães Gouvêa Escritório de Arte
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Opinião 65: 30 Years, at CCBB/RJ
1995 - São Paulo SP - Contact Project, at Galeria Sesc Paulista
1995 - Niigata (Japan) - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art
1995 - Tokushima (Japan) - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at Centro Cultural de Tokushima
1995 - São Paulo SP - 1st United Artists, at Casa das Rosas
1996 - Gifu (Japan) - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at The Museum of Fine Art Gifu
1996 - Tokyo (Japan) - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at Azabu Art Museum
1996 - São Paulo SP - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at Masp
1996 - Belo Horizonte MG - Traveling Prints, at Palácio das Artes
1996 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Art: 50 Years of History in the MAC/USP Collection: 1920-1970, at MAC/USP
1996 - São Paulo SP - Six Timeless Artists, at Múltipla Galeria de Arte
1996 - São Paulo SP - 2nd United Artists: Utopia, at Casa das Rosas
1997 - Jacareí SP - Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese-Brazilian Painters, at Oficina de Artes Santa Helena
1999 - São Paulo SP - Everyday Life/Art: Consumption - Metamorphosis of Consumption, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - São Paulo SP - United Artists: Journeys of Identities, at Casa das Rosas
1999 - São Paulo SP - Lithography: Fidelity and Memory, at Espaço de Artes Unicid
2001 - São Paulo SP - Japanese-Brazilian Art: Moments, at Galeria Euroart Castelli
2001 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Culture 1, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - 8 Contemporary Brazilian Artists, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Imaginary Mexico: The Gaze of the Brazilian Artist, at Casa das Rosas
2002 - São Paulo SP - Open Opera: Celebration, at Casa das Rosas
2003 - São Paulo SP - Israel and Palestine: Two States for Two Peoples, at Sesc Pompeia
2003 - São Paulo SP - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Fabric of Brazilian Art, at MNBA
2005 - São Paulo SP - Ship of Fools, at MAC/USP
Source: Itaú Cultural
