Kimiyo Mishima was born in 1932 in Osaka, and began painting in her teens. Responding to the significant movements in the 1950s - 1960s, such as Art Informel, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, Mishima established her own style and invoked techniques such as collage and repetitive imagery to create signature works. Her paintings produced in the 1960s began a process which led to ceramic works, which she began to create after 1971, using printed matter such as newspapers, magazines and advertising flyers which Mishima then transferred onto the works with a silkscreen process.
The works created in 1960s reveals the artist’s fear and anxiety towards an overly informational society through her use of appropriated repeated lettering and imagery of the human body and the tense relationship she finds between painting and material. In Mishima’s art, color plays an important role. Created in 1962, Recollection II stands as an example of when her palette transformed into muted tonalities.
Fragment II (1964), marks a departure for the artist into brighter colors. It is composed of her signature darker tone colors of earlier works while indicating a shift to the use of luminous colors. This large-scale painting is characteristically filled with printed matter, a result of her experimental challenge to specific art trends imported from outside Japan as well as her maturity in her own method and technique.
Major solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Taka Ishii Gallery New York (New York, 2016), Art Factory Jonanjima (Tokyo, 2015), “Painting Period 1954-1970”, Gallery Yamaki Fine Art (Hyogo, 2013), Gallery Nii (Tokyo, 2004), Contemporary Art Museum, Ise (Mie, 2004) and Minami Gallery (Tokyo, 1974).
Her works are included in the Permanent Collections of The Everson Museum of Art, New York; The First National Bank of Chicago; The Museum of Art Olot, Spain; The Korean Culture & Arts Foundation Seoul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Benesse Art Site Naoshima; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
