Artist Birthday: Yamaguchi Katsuhiro

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi was a key figure in the transition to modernism in Japanese art after World War II (1939–1945). He incorporated his view of modernist experiment almost as a science into numerous modernism groups he either founded or participated in.

Artist birthday for 22 April: Yamaguchi Katsuhiro (1928–2018, Japan)

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi was an interdisciplinary artist who emphasized a conceptual modernism.

Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Voice, 1962. Iron rods and sack cloth, 120 x 111 x 51 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (MOMA-S1352)

Yamaguchi had no formal art training. However, his body of work covered a broad range of art forms, including sculpture, light works, silkscreen, installation, and environmental planning. One of his ongoing interests in his sculptures emerged from his desire for viewers to interact with them. His cloth sculptures, like Voice, are among his most renowned works -- structures composed of iron rods with various types of found materials stretched over them. There is typically a void somewhere on the work, in the case of Voice, it would seem that the void is a metaphor for a mouth uttering sounds. Materials range from unprinted fabrics, to silkscreened commercial sacks, as seen in Voice. There is a similarity in these works to the daring stitched and stretched sculptures of Lee Bontecou (1931–2022), while the commercial printing reflects a Pop Art aesthetic. These works, invariably mounted on the wall or suspended from the ceiling, emphasize Yamaguchi's intention that the viewer see the works as different from every vantage point, while the work interacts with the gallery space.

After the tragedy of World War II and Japan's crushing defeat, a new generation of artists emerged who rejected the lingering dominance of reverence in Japan for traditional arts. The Western occupation of Japan (1945–1952) opened the door to myriad of cultural influences that affected drastic change in Japanese art, particularly in the revived post-War economy. After the war, Japanese artists found many new technologies from the West in colors, synthetic media, and printmaking techniques. Subsequently added to that were happenings, installations, and other new conceptual ways of working. Japanese artists of the 1950s began investigating uncharted means of expression.

Many new artists' groups emerged that explored all sorts of modernism. Artists adapted subject matter and radical art practices that hd been utterly alien in past Japanese artistic practice. Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) was active in Tokyo 1951 to 1958, and Gutai Bijyutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) was active in Osaka 1954 to 1972. Jikken Kōbō's uniting principle was to treat experiment in art as if it were science. Although the group lasted less than a decade, its contributions to modern art in Japan endured into the 21st century.

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi was a founding member of Jikken Kōbō. Born in Tokyo, he initially applied to Nihon University there in 1948 to study law, but at the same time he was exhibiting abstract paintings. He seems to have left law by the wayside in the 1950s, as his activity in artists' groups and various art forms dominated the rest of his life. His first exhibitions were with the avant-garde group Shichiyokai (Seven-Days-a-Week Association). He also served as a founding member of Seiki no Kai (Century Association) of modern painting. Through the 1970s and 1980s Yamaguchi continued to participate in various art groups. He was a professor of art at Tsukuba University (1977–1992) and Kobe University as a visual communications professor (1992–-1999). He also helped in the planning of Awaji Art Village in 2001.