Imai Toshimitsu

Devoid of any one form, the wind is the unformed form whose evanescent, intangible, "informel" mark remains. [...] Imaï paints on the wing of the wind: the vibrancy that he imparts to colored surfaces is more immaterial than material in its essence. [...] Imaï's painting resumes the tradition of displaying seasonable beauty. – Pierre Restany, 1989¹

Having moved to Paris in 1952, Imaï Toshimitsu was the first Japanese artist to become associated with the European Informel movement. The fiercely resplendent Avalanche (1962) (Lot 1013) was created a decade after Imaï's immersion into the Parisian art scene, displaying not only his unbridled, virtuosic expressionist aesthetic but also a distinctive trace of his East Asian roots. Forsaking outline and brush, Imaï threw paint and acrylic on his canvas in thick, spirited spatters, dripping, heaping and layering with knives: the resulting marks and sinewy trails are fluid and lithe as if borne by wind, embodying the vigor and dynamism of splashed calligraphic ink.

In addition, the gleaming gold in the current lot foreshadows Imaï's later works in the 1980s that incorporate traditional Ka-Cho-Fu-Getsu (flower-bird-wind-moon) aesthetics. In assessing his own artistic career, Imaï declares that he was only able to avoid the dead-end of gestural formalism and preserve the life and vigor of the Informel spirit by referring to Zen philosophies based on the harmony between man and seasonal rhythms.² The notion of nature as the underlying drive of sensibility recalls that of Yves Klein, whose primary colors of blue, gold and pink encapsulate the essen and spirit of nature. "Both Klein and Imaï are architects of the air", writes Pierre Restany. "The one seeks the alchemist's flame that burns at the heart of the void, while the other paints on the wing of the wind. One discovered the West through the East and the other, the East through the West."³

Imaï's astonishingly complex pictorial surfaces are at once rugged and majestic, exuding a quietly gripping cosmic dynamism that is humble yet transcendent. Mesmerizing sheens of color shimmer through a glossed lacquer finish reminiscent of traditional Japanese pottery, such that when compared to contemporary Informel artists of the time, Imaï's roots set him apart with an East Asian sensibility that reach into the very depths of human existence. In art critic Takiguchi Shuzo's words, Imaï's art is "directed toward the sources, and goes back to the primitive elements of Japanese art whose masterpieces formerly realized the perfect unity of signs and matter [...] Imaï admits in his picture his sympathy for the magic of earth and fire of ancient Japanese potters [...] In the old craft of European painting Imaï is going to accomplish a virginal magic".

¹ Pierre Restany, in exhibition catalogue of Imaï: A Retrospective 1950-1989, 1989, p. 172

² Refer to 1, p. 171

³ Refer to 1, p. 171