Literature

Keiichi Tanaami, born in 1936 in Tokyo, is one of the leading pop artists of postwar Japan, and has been active as a multi-genre artist since the 1960s. He was 9 years old when Tokyo was bombed during the Great Tokyo Air Raid of World War II in 1945. Images seared into the back of his mind at this time would

became major motifs in his art works: roaring American bombers, the city a sea of fire, fleeing masses, and his father’s deformed goldfish swimming in its tank, flashes from the bombs reflecting in the water.

Tanaami started drawing from a very young age, and as a junior high school student heoften spent time at the studio of leading postwar cartoonist Kazushi Hara with the intention of becoming a cartoonist himself. After Hara’s sudden death, however, he turned to the pioneering field within manga of graphic novels, and went on to study at Musashino Art University. During the ‘60s he worked as a successful illustrator and graphic designer while also actively participating in the Neo-Dada organization, one of the defining art movements of postwar Japan.

In the latter half of the ‘60s he also took up video art. Tanaami has worked as a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design since 1991, where he has helped bring up young new artists such as Tabaimo. Recent exhibitsinclude “Day Tripper” at Art & Public in Geneva (2007), “SPIRAL” at Galerie Gebr. Lehmann in Berlin (2008), “Kochuten” at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND (2009), “Still in Dream” at Frieze Art Fair (2010) and “No More War” at Art 42 Basel (2011).

“A magazine that is packed to the brim with human interests and desires bears a strong resemblance to who I am as a person. My life is not a straight shot, with one central theme running through it like a book. It would be more properly called a ‘magazine editor’s life’, spent looking about at my surroundings constantly, wandering from place to place, engaging in a wide variety of work along the way.” 

- Keiichi Tanaami