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Thomsen Gallery is pleased to present our second online viewing room, dedicated to paintings by Minol Araki (1928-2010), whose works we exhibited in our New York gallery in 2012 and 2015.
Minol Araki: Nature in Ink presents mature paintings by an artist who was devoted to creating art for its own sake. Araki, by profession an industrial designer, rarely exhibited during his lifetime and was an unusual twentieth-century adherent to the Chinese and Japanese literati tradition which regarded artists as intellectuals. The exhibition presents 25 paintings of elements of nature, showing Araki’s masterful use of ink and his influences from China, Japan and the West.
Araki's works are in the permanent collections of 19 museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
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Minol Araki (1928-2010)
Thomsen Gallery is proud to represent the estate of Minol (Minoru) Araki (1928-2010), an individual who spanned Chinese, Japanese and American culture and combined a contemporary professional calling with a private passion for painting. Araki was committed to the wenren ("literati") artistic tradition, both in its original Chinese guise and as reinvigorated by Japanese painters. One facet of this tradition is indifference to commercial gain through artistic production-an indifference that was sincerely felt by Araki, whose financial success enabled him to pursue brush painting solely as an essential aspect of a refined, fruitful, and complete life.
Born into a Japanese artistic family in northeastern China, Araki began studying painting at the age of seven. Influenced by the writings of legendary American designer Raymond Loewy, he chose to pursue a career in industry but continued to paint in his spare time even as his work as a designer of consumer electronics took him frequently to Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as to the United States. A key turning point in his artistic formation was a meeting in 1973-when he was already in his forties-with Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), charismatic itinerant master painter, master forger, and one of the most influential figures in the twentieth-century pictorial art of East Asia. Araki became friendly with the elderly genius and with Zhang's encouragement intensified his efforts to carve out a distinctive individual style expressed in dynamic splashed-ink technique, occasionally enhanced by the addition of color, sometimes sparing, sometimes lavish and striking.
Araki remained committed to the literati tradition and prized individual expression above all else, seeking always to capture the rhythms of nature in his art. His mature work achieves a fusion of elements from diverse historical periods and cultures: the intimate album painting of China's Song dynasty (960-1279); lively, eye-teasing twentieth-century French still lifes; American artists, especially Ben Shahn (1898-1969); and, above all, the scholar-amateur manner in Chinese and Japanese painting. His atmospheric landscapes and plant paintings, never for sale during his lifetime, were widely exhibited in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States and have recently been acquired by several leading American museums.
Artist Biography
1928 Born in Dairen, Manchuria, China, to Japanese parents
1935 Began studying brush painting with a local Chinese painter
1945 Studied architecture at Nanman Kōsen (Southern Manchuria Technical College) in Dairen
1945 Repatriated with his family to Japan, settling in Nagasaki
1947 Resumed studies at Kuwazawa Design School, Tokyo
1959 Started his first company, NOL Industrial Design, in Japan
1960s Extensive travel to Europe, the United States, and Mexico
1960s Started his second company, PIPa Corp., in the United States
1973 First meeting with Chang Dai-chien in Taipei
1977 Solo exhibition, Hong Kong City Hall Museum
1978 Solo exhibition, National Museum of History, Taipei
1980 Solo exhibition, National Museum of History, Taipei
1981 Solo exhibition, Hong Kong City Hall Museum
1982 Group exhibition: "Shigen-ten," Tokyo Central Museum
1982 Group exhibition: Eighth "Exposition France-Japon," Paris
1983 Group exhibition: Ninth "Exposition France-Japon," Paris
1999 Solo exhibition, National Museum of History, Taipei
1999 Solo exhibition, Hong Kong Arts Centre
1999 Solo exhibition, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
2001 Group exhibition, Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA
2002 Solo exhibition, Morikami Museum, Delray Beach, FL
2002 Solo exhibition, Indianapolis Art Museum, Indianapolis, IN
2002 Solo exhibition, Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture, Hanford, CA
2005 First gallery exhibition, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2007 Second gallery exhibition, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2010 Died in Tokyo
2012 Solo exhibition, Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York
2015 Solo exhibition, Erik Thomsen Gallery, New York
2017 Retrospective exhibition, Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
2020 Solo online exhibition, Thomsen Gallery, New York
Public Collections Include
Art Institute of Chicago
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture, Hanford CA
Cleveland Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
Hong Kong Museum of Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Morikami Museum, Delray Beach FL
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Museum of History, Taipei
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Phoenix Art Museum
Saint Louis Art Museum
San Antonio Art Museum
USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena CA
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT
Paintings by Minol Araki: Nature in Ink
Past viewing_room
