Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde

Download or read book Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde written by Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bokujinkai—or ‘People of the Ink’—was a group formed in Kyoto in 1952 by five calligraphers: Morita Shiryū, Inoue Yūichi, Eguchi Sōgen, Nakamura Bokushi, and Sekiya Yoshimichi. The avant-garde movement they launched aspired to raise calligraphy to the same level of international prominence as abstract painting. To this end, the Bokujinkai collaborated with artists from European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism, sharing exhibition spaces with them in New York, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond. The first English-language book to focus on the postwar history of Japanese calligraphy, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde explains how the Bokujinkai rerouted the trajectory of global abstract art and attuned foreign audiences to calligraphic visualities and narratives.