Tetsumi Kudo

Tetsumi Kudo (born in Osaka, 1935-1990) explored the existential possibilities for humanity in an increasingly polluted and consumption-driven world. Through performances, films, texts, and most importantly sculpture incorporating found materials and household objects, he sought to subvert the separation between art and lived experience, and to interrogate mass consumerism and the rise of technology. As an essential figure in the development of “anti-art” avant-garde art in Tokyo in the late 1950’s, and as one of the most innovative artists in France in the 1960s and 70s after settling in Paris in 1962, Kudo suggested a “new ecology” in which pollution, technology, and humanity had become a symbiotic whole in which each affected the other.

Tetsumi Kudo’s work has been widely recognized since the 1960s, exhibiting throughout Europe and Japan. His work can be found in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Stedelijk Museum; the Pinault Collection; Aomori Museum of Art; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; among others. His work is the subject of a large scale retrospective this Fall at the Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany (2016). Other significant exhibitions include: a retrospective in 2013 (Osaka Museum, Aomori Museum, and National Museum of Art, Tokyo); Walker Art Center (2008), La Maison Rouge, Paris (2007), The National Museum of Art Osaka (1994), the Van Reekum Museum, Apeldoorn and the Stedelijk Museum (1991).


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