Exhibition poster by Kazumasa Nagai
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Curated by Shoji Katagishi and Keiko Aso
Date: 19.04.2014-01.06.2014
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m (ticketing closes at 4:30 p.m.)
Address: The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama 1-16-12, Nishinakano-machi, Toyama-shi, 939-8636 Japan
Location: First Floor (Art Museum Special Exhibition Room)
Admission Fee for Special Exhibition (including Admission Fee for Permanent Exhibition) :
Adult 900 yen, College student 650 yen. Entry of student under the age of 18 is free.
This exhibition is a comprehensive retrospective celebrating the poster designs of Kazumasa Nagai, a leading Japanese graphic designer who has exerted a profound influence on the international world of design in a career that has spanned over sixty years.
Kazumasa Nagai was born in Osaka in 1929. He withdrew from the sculpture department of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1951 to join the Daiwabo textile company, where he was placed in charge of advertising and began his career as a graphic designer. He became a member of the Japan Advertising Artists Club (JAAC) in 1953, and in 1960 he participated in the founding of the Nippon Design Center with a group of fellow designers that included Yusaku Kamekura and Ikko Tanaka. His diverse career has encompassed the production of posters, CI and symbol marks, and etchings, and with honors including the Gold Prize at the 1st Warsaw International Poster Biennale in 1966 and his selection as the designer of the 1972 Sapporo Olympic Winter Games symbol mark, he has been a driving force in the postwar world of Japanese graphic design.
Through his design work, Kazumasa Nagai has explored such universal and fundamental human themes as space and life, and his efforts to convey his vision and push the boundaries of design have resulted in many pioneering works of graphic design. His career has revolved around the production of posters, including the series of posters he has designed for exhibitions of the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama in the thirty-some years since the museum's opening. A remarkable body of work that is quite without parallel in the world, this series illustrates the extraordinary graphic design skills of this designer and constitutes an important part of his life's work.
This book charts the extensive course of Kazumasa Nagai's poster design career with approximately 500 representative works, including the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama poster series and also featuring works ranging from those of his early period, with their abstract geometric designs and connotations of vast universes, to the most recent installations of his LIFE series, which probes the meaning and mysteries of life.
For more than a half-century, Kazumasa Nagai has created a world of poster design that reminds us of that which we have a tendency to forget – a contemplation of what it means to be alive, and the very meaning of art itself. It is our hope that this exhibition will serve as an opportunity for us to ponder these questions anew.
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