Mixed media on paper
8,2 x 5,7 in (20,8 x 14,5 cm)

One of the leading artists of Japan’s influential Neo-Pop movement, Nara was born in Hirosaki, Japan, and studied at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, and Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in Dusseldorf, Germany. He is known for his paintings, drawings and sculptures of wide-eyed children and animals that are at once adorable and aggressive, whimsical and menacing. Nara’s work fuses Japanese visual traditions and Western Modernism. His images show influences from a variety of popular media including Manga and Anime to punk rock. His practice draws from a lonely childhood in rural Japan, one spent mostly with his imagination, pets, and television for company. Simultaneously vulnerable and provocative, his graphics stand as a critical affront to the rigidness of certain aspects of Japan’s social conventions. They resonate with a universal language of youthful alienation, anger and bemusement, and raise deeper, psychological questions about the notion of childhood. Nara was awarded Asia Society’s Asia Arts Award in 2016 and Award for Artist from Nagoya City, Japan in 1995.