ONOSATO Toshinobu

Onosato Toshinobu was born in Iida, Nagano Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo in 1931 to study engineering at Nihon University, but soon dropped out to attend the art school run by the progressive painter and designer Tsuda Seifu (1880–1978). In 1935, dissatisfied with the exhibition opportunities offered by existing art associations, Onosato formed his own – the Kokushoku Yogaten (Black Oil Painting Exhibition). Many of his contemporaries were engaging with developments taking place in European art, with some favouring the approach taken by André Breton and the Surrealists, and others preferring the abstract expressionism promoted by the Abstraction- Création artists. In favour of the latter, and encouraging what he saw as a connection between European geometric abstraction and traditional Japanese crafts, Hasegawa Saburo (1906–57) set up the Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai (Free Artists’ Association) in Japan. Onosato joined in 1937, remaining with the group until 1956. Onosato’s work became increasingly abstract, and by the 1940s he was creating canvases formed entirely of circles and rectangles. In 1942 he was called up for military service and posted to Manchuria. He was then interned for three years in Siberia, before returning to Japan in 1948. Circles first appeared in Onosato’s work in around 1955, and this shape eventually became his preferred form, often arranged to create the effect of an optical illusion, with the use of pattern, colour and small irregularities providing a path for the viewer’s eye to follow. The solid circles of his earlier work eventually gave way to patterns that used circles broken down into smaller components. In Onosato’s own words, when the flat surface of a circle is divided into smaller units ‘its area becomes more tangible. The division of the circle creates a psychological and rectangular tension from the overlapping of colored surfaces, and transforms the abstract plane into a real object’. Onosato exhibited internationally and won numerous awards, with significant milestones including a solo exhibition in 1961 at the Gres Gallery in Washington, D.C.; first prize at the 7th Japan International Art Exhibition in 1963; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964; and representing Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and 1966. His work is held in museum collections including the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and the Pola Museum in Hakone, Japan; the British Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Guggenheim in New York; and the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. Onosatu passed away in 1986 in Kiryu. In 1992, the Toshinobu Onosato Museum of Art was built in his memory.