Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Artist of the day, July 21, 2020: Kazumasa Nagai, a Japanese printmaker and graphic designer (#1047)

Kazumasa Nagai (1929) is a Japanese printmaker and graphic designer.

One of Japan's leading graphic designers and art directors since the 1960s, Nagai trained at theTokyo National University of Fine Arts in scultpure but left in 1951 to work as a graphic designer for the Tokyo Spinning Co. in Osaka.

Starting in 1960, he worked for the Nippon Design Center, serving as its president and later as director. By the early 1960s, he had developed a personal style of abstract, geometric, linear forms and patterns that create surreal landscapes. This style appeared in posters for Nikon; GQ magazine; and his freelance work of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Although his first works were abstract at the beginning, he changed for handmade designs of animals and plants in the 1980s.

By the late 1980s realistic elements entered his design vocabularly. There have been several retrospective exhibitions of his work, the most recent at the Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art in 1990.

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 Advertisement poster for Nikon camera
1960

 Poster for exhibition “Designs Today”
1960

Poster for Nikon
1960

 Poster for exhibition “Good Design”
1961

 The Cell
1966

 One-Man Show
Ichibankan Gallery, 1968

One-Man Show
Imabashi Gallery, 1968

  Kazumasa Nagai Exhibition
Imabashi Gallery 1969

Light and Vision
1969

 Poster for exhibition “Graphic Image”
Tokyo Museum of Arts, 1973

 Poster for Lilycolor Co. Ltd.
Tokyo ,1974

 Poster for Kazumasa Nagai exhibition
Tokyo, 1975

 Adonis. Group of 3 posters
1976


 Poster for “Inter Design”
1980

  Nagauta Shamisen
Poster, 1981

  Poster for the magazine TENRI
1981

 Poster for The First Festival of Contemporary Art
The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, 1982

  Artists Paint Toyama: 100 Landscapes by 100 Artists
1983

Poster in Toyama
1985

 Japan
Poster, 1987

 Casa Wolf
Poster, 1987–89

Poster for Museum of Modern Art
Toyama, 1989

Exhibition poster, 1990

 curiosities & clockwork
1991

Poster from “LIFE” series
1993

 Poster for Ueno Zoo
Tokyo, 1994








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