Born in Tokyo in 1936, Keiichi Tanaami was a pioneer of pop art in Japan. Though his ultra-vivid, cartoon-esque creations in assorted media have long been acclaimed, and exhibited at such major institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago and London’s Tate Modern, Tanaami’s profile has recently risen higher than ever.
While his work underwent a hugely positive reappraisal by art world tastemakers, Tanaami collaborated with the likes of Adidas, Yohji Yamamoto and even Barbie. His late-career surge in popularity is crowned by this first major retrospective, which gains poignant significance with the announcement that Tanaami passed away just two days after the show’s opening in August.
Across this major art museum’s vast galleries, consistently retina-popping work traces Tanaami’s journey from commercial designer – he was the first art director of Playboy magazine’s Japanese edition – to leading figure in the country’s underground art scene. In paintings, collages, sculptures, films, animation and more, his work shares some spirit with Western pop artists. Simultaneously evident, though, is a visceral understanding of Japan’s unique wartime and postwar history, drawn from the artist’s lived experience.
The 1967 screen print ‘No More War 1’, for example, echoes the pacifist sentiment of many young Japanese in that era, while ‘Drama of Death and Rebirth’, a 2019 canvas, is a psychedelic hellscape punctuated by fire from US fighter planes. Bringing things right up to date are recent creations including Tanaami’s 2024 work for Japanese rock band Radwimps, and a series of larger-than-life installations that manifest his singular vision in stunning three-dimensional form.