Kazuo Wakabayashi

Kazuo Wakabayashi (Kobe, Japan 1931 - 2021)

Kazuo Wakabayashi was a painter. He was born in Kobe, Japan, in 1931. He studied at the Hikone Technical School in Shiga Prefecture in 1944, and between 1947 and 1950, he attended the School of Fine Arts and the Niki Academy in Tokyo, in addition to attending classes with Kanosuke Tamura. In 1950, he abandoned architecture to devote himself to painting. He participated in the Babel and Seiki groups and illustrated Japanese newspapers such as Shinko Shimbun and All Sports. He received awards at art salons in Japan between 1947 and 1959.

He moved to São Paulo in 1961, joining the Seibi Group, with the support of Manabu Mabe and Tomie Ohtake. In 1963, he received the gold medal at the 12th São Paulo Salon of Modern Art and the 7th Seibi Group Salon. In 1966, he won first prize at the Salão de Abril at the MAM/RJ. He participated in several editions of the São Paulo Biennial between 1963 and 1967, winning awards. In 1992, he had a book published with an introduction by Jayme Mauricio, and in 1993, the Paço das Artes held a retrospective of his work.

Critical Commentary

Kazuo Wakabayashi arrived in Brazil in 1961 as a mature artist, with a solid career in Japan. He developed an abstract work with an informal orientation, marked by research into techniques, colors, and materials. Between the 1960s and 1970s, he worked with precise contours and intense colors, exploring formal variations within rhythmic compositions, as in Untitled (1966) and Counterpoint (1970). He also created monochromatic surfaces with relief and texture, as in Red (1964) and Abstraction (c. 1960).

From the late 1970s onward, he began to place greater emphasis on texture and relief, often uniform throughout the canvas or concentrated in specific areas, as in Composition in Yellow (1971) and Composition in White (1983). In works such as Abstract Composition (1970), he uses cut circular shapes to reveal internal contrasts of color and texture.

In subsequent years, he drew closer to the tradition of Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking, incorporating Japanese textile prints into his canvases. He developed collages combined with painting, such as Insinuação em Negro (1988), Sem Título (1987), and Composição em Relevo (1983), creating visual relationships between applied textures and decorative patterns. In some works, he adopted titles that suggest natural themes, such as Onda (1987) and Mensagem do Mar (1987).