Biography

Born in Tokyo in 1932, Ushio Shinohara comes from an artistic family. His father a poet, his mother a nihonga painter and doll maker, Ushio continued the artistic legacy and attended Tokyo University of the Arts in 1952. In 1957, Ushio left the university to pursue his education independently, pouring over international works of art criticism and avant-garde theorists. Ushio entered the 1960s as a force of the Japanese avant-garde art scene with his action paintings. He gained particular notoriety for his boxing paintings. Attaching sponges to his boxing gloves, Ushio would saturate the gloves with paint and punch his way across a long paper or canvas. In 1963, Ushio discovered a deep and lasting inspiration in the American avant-garde on the pages of Art International and promptly began his Imitation Art series (1963).  In 1965, Ushio combined his American influences with the Japanese tradition. Upon seeing woodblock prints from the Edo period (1603-1868), Ushio created his Oiran series, blending the iconography of Edo-period courtesans with the vivid colors and geometric shapes so popular within American Pop art. In 1969, Ushio moved to New York City on a scholarship from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund. Though the scholarship ended after a year, he made New York his permanent home. Ushio has participated in exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Japan Society in New York, and the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, to name just a few. His work can be found in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art New York and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.