Yoshitomo Nara

Celebrating rebellious youth and the lonely child, Yoshitomo Nara has become of the leading figures in a generation of Japanese artists brought together under the banner of ‘Superflat’, with his cute and creepy, deceptively simple artworks, that express children and animals in a range of different emotional complexities from resistance and quietude to contemplation.

Born in Hirosaki, Japan in 1959, he attended the Aichi University of the Arts, before pursuing further education at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in 1993 and later settling in Cologne. This time was of significant importance for Nara’s artistic evolution, during which he began incorporating Japanese and Western pop culture into his work, as seen with ‘Pony Tail’ and ‘Haze Days’. The works focus on one central innocuous subject with little or no background. Initially cute in appearance, they are often branded with weapons such as knives and saws. 

In 2000, he returned to Japan with his seminal solo exhibition, ‘I Don’t Mind, If You Forget Me’, displayed at the Yokohama Museum of Art. The show encapsulated his extensive multidisciplinary artistic aesthetic and initiated a series of collaborations with the design collective Graf, such as ‘Yoshitomo Nara + Graf: Torre de Malaga', at the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga.

After the Japanese earthquake of 2011, an air of thoughtfulness and pathos entered his work. The ‘Lake/Thinking One’; the first painting he made after the disaster, depicted the mediative and thoughtful figures that marked the shift in his mature practice.

Currently based in Nasushiobara, Japan, Yoshitomo Nara has become the most expensive Japanese artist to date. His works can be found in eminent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and have received record-breaking auction sales, such as ‘Knife Behind Back’ selling at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for HK$195.7 million.