Shōzō Shimamoto’s art is so intense that it is almost impossible to describe, just like when you pick your favorite perfume for life but you can’t say why, it just is.

 Nyotaku-Bottle Crash 07, 1995-2007

Co-founder with Jiro Yoshihara of the Gutai art movement (which means “tangible, concrete”, as opposed to the abstract concept of art) in 1954, Shimamoto (1928-) believes beauty generates once you damage things, in a sort of hedonistic decay spell of the object that actually, by being destroyed, reveals its inner life.

 Capri Certosa 4, 2008

Shimamoto’s art - despite the apparent chaos - is everything but improvisation: the artistic gesture that belongs to his works is always planned carefully.

 Hole Esquisse, 1958

His constant experimentation has always had colors as protagonist: he bottles them up and makes them explode on canvas (Bottle Crash period), he shoots them through a gun (Cannon Works period), he arranges them with a precise order…these are not accidents, but a simple transformation of elements through a dynamic that gives them texture and tangibility.

 Senza titolo / Untitled, 1954

The canvas is then pervaded by wounds, the gestures of the artist that linger long after the fight of the color with the surface has ended.

 Red A on Red, 1976

“Shōzō Shimamoto. 1950-2011 works. The East and the West.” (Shōzō Shimamoto. Opere 1950-2011), on show until January 8^th at Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia (Corso Garibaldi 29/31), displays 80 works among paintings, sculptures and video installation that recount his artistic career, including never displayed before works on paper, color explosions through performance in Sorrento and Capri, recent works.

 Written by Elisa della Barba

Cover Credits: Buddha, 2008, Napoli, Fondazione Morra