Kazuo Nakamura
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kazuo Nakamura was a Japanese-Canadian painter and sculptor (born Vancouver October 13, 1926; died Toronto April 9, 2002) and a founding member of the Toronto-based Painters Eleven group in the 1950s.
| Kazuo Nakamura | |
 Inner Structure, 1956, oil on masonite |
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| Born | October 13, 1926 Vancouver, British Columbia |
| Died | April 9, 2002 Toronto, Ontario |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Field | painting, sculpture |
| Training | Central Technical School |
| Movement | Painters Eleven, abstract expressionism |
| Influenced by | László Moholy-Nagy, Jock Macdonald |
| Awards | Honorary Fellow, Ontario College of Art & Design |
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[edit] Life
Kazuo Nakamura was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and was among the Japanese-Canadians interned during WWII. He studied at Toronto's Central Technical School (1948-51), and co-founded Painters Eleven. Although sharing in the other members' use of painterly abstraction, Nakamura's work was distinguished within the group by his use of simpler structures and monochromatic colours.
[edit] Work
Influenced by fellow Painters Eleven member Jock MacDonald's interest in László Moholy-Nagy's reading of science, Nakamura was concerned with science, time and space. Nakamura described himself as seeking a "fundamental universal pattern in all art and nature." In the 1970s and 80s he increasingly emphasized his grid paintings based on number structures, which came to involve the Pascal triangle. To Nakamura, these laboriously inscribed works were a quest for some ultimate order in the apparent chaos of the universe.
[edit] Commissions
His work is part of the permanent collection at Toronto's Lester Pearson International Airport and Ontario Provincial Queen's Park Complex.
[edit] International exhibitions
In 1983 and 1984 as part of Ontario Heritage Foundation's Firestone Collection Nakamura's work toured London (UK), Paris and Madrid. In 1991 he exhibited at the New Canadian Embassy in Tokyo and in 1992 at Ader Tajan, Art Contemporain du Canada, Espace Chapon in Paris.
[edit] Honours
In 2000 Nakamura was made an honorary fellow at the Ontario College of Art & Design. [1] and in 2004 he was the subject of the posthumous retrospective Kazuo Nakamura: A Human Measure at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
