Ay-O - Rainbow Klee - 東方的古典の海岸風景 (Eastern Classical Coastal Landscape)

Modern | Sōsaku Hanga Silkscreen Print

Ay-O’s 1994 silkscreen “Rainbow Klee - 東方的古典の海岸風景 (Eastern Classical Coastal Landscape)” reinterprets Paul Klee’s 1936 "Ost-Klassische Küsten-Landschaft". Klee’s drawing evokes a coastal landscape with geometric forms. Ay-O translates this omposition into rainbow - angular forms of mountain and sea rendered in saturated bands of purple, green, yellow, and red. The result is both homage and reinvention, infusing Klee’s structural lyricism with Ay-O's vibrant colour. 🌄🌈🖼️

• Year & Edition: 1994 · Ed. of 120 (67/120) (signed, dated & editioned in pencil).
  
• Medium: Silkscreen. Printed by 助田憲亮 Kenryō Sukeda.
  
• Dimensions: H: 28.00 cm × W: 38.30 cm.
  
• Condition: Beautiful. Vibrant colours, well stored over the years. Paper clean & crisp.
  
• Notes: Raisonné No. 744 in Rainbow Rainbow: Ay-O’s Rainbow Prints Catalogue Raisonné 1982-2000 (Abe Publishing, 2004). Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss-German painter and Bauhaus master, produced Ost-Klassische Küsten-Landschaft in 1936 during his Bern years. The drawing combines architectonic structure with landscape motifs, here reimagined by Ay-O in rainbow gradations as part of his homage series to Western modernism. *Original catalogued in the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern - 1936, No. 19.

About the Artist

Ay-O (born 1931) is a seminal figure in postwar Japanese avant-garde art, celebrated for his immersive “Rainbow” series of vibrant paintings, silkscreens and installations. Early influences included the Demokrato Artist Association and the Society for Creative Art Education, which fostered his experimental spirit. In the 1960s he joined George Maciunas’s Fluxus movement, collaborating with Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Claes Oldenburg on boundary-pushing performances. Ay-O’s playful, multi-sensory use of gradated colour has earned him international acclaim, with major exhibitions at the National Museum of Asian Art (Washington, D.C.) and Kunsthal Aarhus, and works held in the British Museum, MoMA (New York) and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. [ ← View All Works by Ay-O]