shinkichi tajiri (1923 - 2009)
Shinkichi Tajiri is an American and Dutch painter and sculptor.
He was the child of first-generation immigrants from Japan to the United States. He moved to Paris in 1949 and studied with Osip Zadkin and Fernand Léger, and moved to the Netherlands with his Dutch wife in the late 1950s.
In addition to sculpture, Tajiri was active in painting, photography and filmmaking. The central themes of his work - speed, eroticism, force or violence — represent a constant confrontation with the madness of World War II and its aftermath. The recurring images of the knot and the warrior and the themes of war and violence became Tajiri's way of crystallizing the horrors he had personally experienced. Documenting the Berlin Wall would later become a central project for him.
Shinkichi Tajiri is an American and Dutch painter and sculptor.
He was the child of first-generation immigrants from Japan to the United States. He moved to Paris in 1949 and studied with Osip Zadkin and Fernand Léger, and moved to the Netherlands with his Dutch wife in the late 1950s.
In addition to sculpture, Tajiri was active in painting, photography and filmmaking. The central themes of his work - speed, eroticism, force or violence — represent a constant confrontation with the madness of World War II and its aftermath. The recurring images of the knot and the warrior and the themes of war and violence became Tajiri's way of crystallizing the horrors he had personally experienced. Documenting the Berlin Wall would later become a central project for him.
