The Artizon Museum, operated by the Ishibashi Foundation, is pleased to present the exhibition TAKIGUCHI Shuzo: Writing and Drawing, together with Selections from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection in the museum’s fifth- and fourth-floor galleries, featuring highlights of the collection with a focus on modern art.
The Ishibashi Foundation collection contains 163 works (including collaborations with others) by Takiguchi Shuzo (1903–1979), a leading poet and art critic of the 20th century. This exhibition will be the first to present more than half of these works together since their acquisition.
Takiguchi’s career centered on the act of writing. He began composing poetry in the 1920s under the influence of Surrealism, and from the 1930s through the postwar years he continued to think and write about art, ranging from the work of Paul Cézanne to that of his own contemporaries. In 1960, he began seriously producing visual works which he called dessins (French for “drawings”). For Takiguchi, who had long engaged with the world through writing, what did it mean to draw instead? With this question as its point of departure, the exhibition surveys the full scope of his activities, from poetry and art criticism to exhibition planning and exchanges with other artists, presenting approximately 140 items in total. These include Takiguchi’s visual works, produced using a wide range of experimental techniques, alongside works by related artists such as Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Miró.