Yasuo Sumi

Yasuo Sumi was born in 1925 in Osaka (Japan) and lived in the city of Itami for many years.

In the mid-1950s, his training as an abstract artist took a decisive turn when Shozo Shimamoto, fascinated by his natural vocation for a wild and “dirty" use of color, involved him in the movement of Gutai painters, founded in 1954 by Shimamoto himself. and by the pioneer of Japanese abstract art Jiro Yoshihara.

Sumi joined the Gutai Group in July 1955 when she participated in the “1st Outdoor Exhibition" organized by the artists in the city of Ashiya. In the immediately following season, while the Gutai Group was recognized in Europe and America, Sumi adheres to all the group's initiatives, increasingly developing his idea of art as a direct of natural vitality through color and action.

Sumi's works of art, dense in color and rich in meaning, are soon recognized all over the world, in the wake of some important judgments by Jiro Yoshihara himself, who will mention Sumi among the protagonists of the Group in all his theoretical publications. between the fifties and sixties in the Gutai Bulletin, starting with the founding Manifesto of the Gutai art of December 1956 (published in the magazine Geijutsu shincho) where Sumi is mentioned for the originality of his painting using a vibrator to frantically spread the color on the canvas. to china).

Yasuo Sumi's works of art have been included in prestigious collections around the world, including the Art Museum of Hyogo Prefecture (Yamamura Collection), the Art Museum of Miyagi Prefecture, the North Kyushu Art Museum, the Ashiya Museum, Osaka Contemporary Art Museum, the Itami Museum, the Urawa Museum and lot of other private and public collection in New York, Paris, London, San Francisco, Torino, Calgary, Vienna, Helsinki, Toulouse, etc…