Minoru Kano

Kanō Minoru 嘉野稔 (1930 Tokyo - 2007 Paris) is a Post-War Japanese abstract sculptor. Lise Cormery writes his biography in her book "Ecole de Paris, Post-War City of Light" : "From 1949 until 1954 he studies at the National University of Tokyo and wins the Young Sculpture Prize in Tokyo in 1954, thanks to a scholarship by the French Government in 1957 he studies in Paris Beaux-Arts and settles forever in Paris. He studies as well in La Grande Chaumière School with the sculptor Zadkine. From 1959 until 1964 he devotes his art to the Roman Art, and sculpts a replica of the famous "Eve", sculpted in the XIIth Century by Gislebertus in Autun Cathedral. 

In 1964 following the general trends of Paris artists and Salons he gives up the marble and the stone, and works on resin creating his famous golden Totems, in the spirit of ancestral sacred art. With his Biennale de Paris Shows in 1965 and Tokyo, he definitely gets into abstract, the new Art Dictatorship, with wood, metals and synthetic resins, in the same way, Philippe Scrive, Post-War Ecole de Paris sculptor from Canada, did. In 1973 he participates to the Sénart Sculpture Symposium and in 1992 Kano realizes the "Unesco Prize" trophy. In 1999 his art is published in the Bénézit Encyclopedia of Art.

PARIS ART OLYMPIADS In 1991 and 1992, under the High Patronage of French President Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, Mayor of Paris, KANO was selected for the delegation of Japan with his sculpture to represent Japan, during the Art Olympiads organized by Lise Cormery Gallery for the CNOSF, French Olympic Committee. This international event was following the famous 1988 Art Olympiads in Seoul, South Korea, where a monumental sculpture Museum in open air and a Museum of International paintings was created for the world competition, in order to invite and show the art of major international artists of the 20th century.