City 191 by Risaburo Kimura

This is a striking image of a fictional city titled City 191 by noted Japanese modernist artist Risaburo Kimura. Kimura is known for a large series of impressions of cities--some real, most imaginary, that he created throughout his life. They are colorful, energetic, and each is a unique distillation of a city's essence. City 191 is dominated by primary and secondary colors. The focus of the image is a green and purple rectangle--possibly a billboard or video display surrounded by red and yellow flames. The structure is possibly supported on some ramshackle purple struts, although they don't visibly contact the rectangle. Arrows point randomly. It conveys the disorientation of a portion of a city that is dominated by displays and visual imagery that is chaotic and constantly shifting such as might be seen in Times Square or the Ginza. The medium as with most of his cities is the screenprint which conveys the vibrant colors very effectively. The piece is unframed. The sheet is untrimmed and is 23.75 x 29.75 inches in size. The image is 18 x 24.5 inches. The title and edition size (4/20 quite small for his work) is given in pencil lower left. It is signed in pencil lower center and dated 1971 lower right. It is in excellent condition. No tears, paper loss, stains, fading, foxing, or other condition issues are present. An excellent work by this well-known artist.

Risaburo Kumura (1924-2014) was born in in Yokosuka City, Japan. He initially studied education followed by philosophy. He was always interested in art and imagined a career as an art critic and writer. However, in his studies he came under the influence of post-war Japanese artists including painter Tetsuzo Tanikawa but then gravitated to printmaking. He studied with two master printmakers, Teijiro Kubo and Masuo Ikeda. While he became familiar with all forms of printmaking, he was especially drawn to serigraphy (silk screen printing). This technique was becoming increasingly popular at this time promoted by pop art icons such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and many others. Kimura was an important figure in that he was beginning to transform traditional Japanese printmaking by incorporating Western influences. (His serigraph City 97 is a brilliant example of a modern print with obvious Japanese influence include a billboard in red ink that resembles an artist's chop mark). Kimura moved to New York in 1964 and spent the rest of his career there. It was here that he embarked on the Great Cities of the World series. Created from 1964 until the end of his life Kimura created more than 400 serigraphs and lithographs depicting real and imagined cities. They are colorful, abstract, and full of energy, much like the cities themselves. The named cities frequently included recognizable landmarks, but always on a colorful abstract background that rendered them vibrant and modern. The fictional cities were generally only numbered and reflected a wide range of colors and shapes drawn from Kimura's vivid imagination. While clearly recognizable as cities because of realistic elements included in the work, they are rendered as fantastical visions of urban structures. They are entirely without people or other trappings such as cars, buses, trams, etc. They are true originals--each as varied as the cities he has chosen to depict. He drew and hand-cut all of the stencils used for these prints. He exhibited extensively throughout his lifetime in the United States and abroad including at the Print Biennale of Tokyo. His work is held by major institutions across the world. His success at merging traditional Japanese techniques with modern art is supported by his work being held by the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, and the Kyoto City Hall in Japan. Other institutions holding his work include the Philadelphia Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Brooklyn Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and La Tertulia Museum in Colombia.