菅井汲 Kumi Sugai (1919-1996)

Calligraphy Meets the Road - The Graphic Prints of Kumi Sugai.

Kumi Sugai (菅井汲, 1919-1996) was born on March 13, 1919, in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture. He took up oil painting at age nine, briefly attended the Osaka School of Fine Arts (大阪美術学校), and then worked as a commercial designer for Hankyu Railway (阪急電鉄) from 1937 - an experience that honed his eye for signage, typography, and visual message. Postwar, he illustrated textbooks, studied nihonga under Nakamura Teii (中村貞以), and dove into the Kansai avant-garde scene via Yoshihara Jirō (吉原治良), founder of the Gutai group. In 1952, he relocated to Paris, & by 1955, alongside his painting, he had begun to embrace lithography, crafting a bold, graphic print vocabulary that fused Japanese calligraphy, Western letterforms, and modern geometric abstraction.

Early Paris works explored calligraphic abstraction; in 1957 he produced the livre d’artiste La Quête sans fin with poet Jean-Clarence Lambert, printed by Priester Frères, before developing a growing fascination for speed and road culture. Underscored by Porsche ownership in the early 1960s, this led to hard-edge compositions that evoke road signs and traffic codes: arrows, chevrons, numerals, & directional symbols - iconic forms central to his mid-1960s “Autoroute” series and subsequent works into the 1990s. Lithography dominated his oeuvre, supplemented by etching and screenprinting for select projects; Japanese museum collections feature early & speed-themed works - such as Motorway in the Morning (1964) - along with minimalist sculptures influenced by urban design aesthetics.

Sugai achieved global acclaim, earning the Grand Prix at the inaugural Kraków International Print Biennial (1966) and the title of Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur (1971). He exhibited extensively in Europe, Japan, and the United States, with holdings in institutions like the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (東京国立近代美術館) and Kyoto (京都国立近代美術館), the Centre Pompidou, the British Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum. For collectors: early Paris-era abstract oils remain widely prized; among prints, 1960s works from the “Autoroute” & later 1970s-90s “Direction”, “S”, & “Zodiac/Constellation” series are particularly desirable examples, as their striking graphic style - fusing Eastern calligraphy with Western modernism - adds graphic, contemporary energy to home interiors.