This piece has found its home. It is kept here as a record of what has passed through our hands.
A rare collaborative cylindrical vase bringing together two major figures from the Iga region of Mie: Motonaga Sadamasa (1922–2011), a core member of the Gutai avant-garde, and the calligrapher Sakaki Bakuzan (1926–2010).
Motonaga was one of Gutai's most celebrated painters, known for vivid, humorous biomorphic abstraction and for adapting the traditional tarashikomi technique of pooled, flowing colour. His work is held by the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bakuzan was one of Japan's most popular calligraphers, famous for radically expressive single characters. A piece uniting the painter's colour and the calligrapher's brush is an unusual meeting of two worlds.
