13802

ARAKI MINOL (1928-2010)

Subject: Mountain Landscape

Signed: 實 (Minoru)

Sealed: 荒木實 (Araki Minoru)

Dated: 1997

Dimensions: 20 5/8 x 29 3/4 in. (unframed)

23 1/4 x 32 1/8 in. (framed)

Media: Ink and color on paper

Price: $ 17,000

Araki Minol was recognized above all for his landscape paintings, a subject to which he returned countless times over the course of his career. Even within this subject, he exhibited a rich variety of styles and approaches, demonstrating the keenness with which he observed the ever-changing world around him. In contrast with his monumental landscapes, which fill entire rooms and invite the viewer to move through the space in awe of nature’s overwhelming majesty, this ink painting of a mountainous landscape in winter offers a moment of stillness and calm, achieved through subtle washes of ink in soft shades of gray. This painting was exhibited in the 1999 Minol Araki exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, and at the National Museum of History in Taipei, Taiwan.

An artist who lived between many worlds, Araki Minol was a prodigious talent who successfully bridged the painting traditions of China and Japan, nature scenes and portraiture, classicism and modernity, and later, the artistic styles that had taken hold in the East and West. His unique hybridity, both biographically and creatively, laid the foundation for his vigorous paintings, which not only synthesized these various influences but further revealed a highly original artistic viewpoint. Delicate botanical studies, intimate in scale, were as much a part of his repertoire as soaring mountain vistas, which could grow to multi-panel, room-sized installations. 

Works of this scale are in the permanent collections of Western institutions including the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Saint Louis Art Museum. Significant works by Araki can also be found in major museums, such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.