矢柳剛 Go (Tsuyoshi) Yayanagi (1933-2025)

Pop-Uki Pioneer: Bridging Ukiyo-e and Pop Art

Go Yayanagi coined “Pop-Uki” to weld the crisp black key-lines and flat planes of Ukiyo-e to Pop Art’s neon palette and jump-cut perspectives. Flamingos, jungle blooms, sensual figures and a zebra stripe - “the fundamental colours of nature… white as life, black as death,” he says - vault through playful, fun-loving compositions that nonetheless plead for ecological care. In six decades he has driven this mischievous graphic language across silkscreens, canvases, textiles, stained glass, murals and architectonic “road-art,” showing that Japanese tradition can spar with global pop without surrendering its green heart.

Born to a ranching family on Hokkaido’s Tokachi plain, Yayanagi left animal-husbandry studies after a revelatory Van Gogh show in Tokyo, supported himself drawing portraits on a U.S. base in Yokohama, and in 1957 boarded the Burajiru-Maru for São Paulo. A solo at that city’s Museum of Modern Art and three years roaming the Amazon, Africa, Singapore, Manila and Hong Kong soaked his palette in equatorial light and fixed the lone zebra that still anchors Pop-Uki iconography. He next moved to Paris, studying colour-viscosity etching with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 (1965-68), then pivoted to exuberant silkscreens that toured European biennales; in 1971 he represented Japan at the 11th São Paulo Art Biennial.

“Every street can be a gallery,” Yayanagi insists, and his work proves it: the 1996 glass mosaic Rhythm of Earth and Life greets travellers in Kushiro Airport, while “Genre Crossing” collaborations with fashion legend Junko Koshino scatter Pop-Uki’s bright wit across catwalks and hotel lobbies. Major retrospectives and his advisory role in Obihiro’s Eco-Model City scheme confirm his stature at home, while recent international solos keep him central to the Neo-Pop conversation. Pre-dating Superflat, Yayanagi’s accessible, exuberant - and unmistakably playful - prints trace an unbroken line from Edo woodblock masters to Murakami’s global pop, proving that colour and compassion can travel just as far as the artist himself.