Yoshihara, Jiro

Yoshihara, Jiro (b Osaka, 1 Jan. 1905; d Ashiya, 10 Feb. 1972).
Japanese painter. He was a wealthy industrialist and was mainly self-taught as an artist. During the 1930s he was a pioneer of abstract art in Japan, but he is best known as the central figure of the Gutai Group, which he founded in 1954 and sustained with his wealth for the rest of his life. In 1957 he was awarded first prize at the Tokyo Biennial. His paintings of this time are ‘a sophisticated mixture of Eastern and Western modes. They mingle Zen…with things learned from American Abstract Expressionism’ (Edward Lucie-Smith, Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, 1996).