Seiko Kanno

Her work additionally suggests her admiration of music, physics and mathematics, to which she became devoted towards in her later years.

• Born — 1933 • Birthplace — Sendai, Japan • Died — 1988 • Movement — Gutai Group

Seiko Kanno was born in Sendai, Japan in 1933. She began painting and composing poems in high school. Kanno graduated from the Faculty of Human Development and Culture at Fukushima University where she often entered her abstract paintings into publicly sponsored exhibitions. Kanno began working with collage upon moving to Kobe, using newspaper and cardboard. Starting in 1964, she began showing her work to Gutai Art exhibitions, becoming an official member in 1968. She returned to painting in the late 60's. In 1965, Kanno moved to Tokyo along with her husband who had been transferred there for work. In Tokyo, she joined an art study group, led by poet Seiichi Niikuni, where she composed semiotic poems and began to introduce geometrical patterns in her paintings, calling these works Kigō shi (code poetry). In later years, Kanno audited university classes in physics and mathematics at Kyoto University, Kwansei Gakuin University, and elsewhere. Much of her later works specifically draw inspiration from these subjects.

• 1997 — Ashiya City Museum of Art & History • 2003 — ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka • 2013 — Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai

• 1966 — 15th Gutai Art Exhibition, guati Pinacotheca • 1970 — 5th Japan Art Festival, Solomon r. guggenheim Museum, New York • 1992-1993 — Gutai I, II, III, ashiya City Museum of art & history • 2004 — The 50th Anniversary of Gutai Retrospective Exhibition, hyōgo Prefectural Museum of art, Kobe • 2012 — Gutai: The Spirit of an Era, The National art Center, Tokyo