Kumi Sugai
Kumi Sugai was born in 1919 in Kobe, Japan. A student of the Fine Arts School of Osaka, he was trained in western pictorial techniques and in traditional Japanese calligraphy. He moved to France in 1952, where in Paris two years later he held his first solo exhibition.
This set in motion the next 10 years of exhibitions and appearing in Salons around the world such as at the Carnegie Foundation in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
His technique developed from graffiti like pieces with little or no colour when he first emerged in France, from 1953 he incorporated more colour in his work and the first signs of geometrical shapes appear alongside. 1958 brings about the Sugai renouncing the shapes of human insects and animals from his work and in 1960 Sugai takes a dramatic change in his work which starts including geometric abstraction and colourful flat tints.
