Kumiko Imanaka

Born: Osaka, 1939
Period of Membership in GUTAI: 1965-1972

Imanaka caught the attention of Jiro Yoshihara at the 18th Ashiya City Exhibition in 1965. In the same year, she became a member of Gutai after exhibiting at the 15th Gutai Art Exhibition. Her pieces, in which red, blue, and yellow metal plates are embedded in spiral shapes on bases composed of Styrofoam boards, change in appearance depending on the viewing angle, with the image not being fixed.
The unanimous evaluation of her work as “optical’” also likely tells us where the focus of Gutai was during this period. In 1969, when she held her solo exhibition at the Gutai Pinacotheca, she presented pieces strung around the exhibition room. This attempt to show a “diagram of relationships brought about by string” was Imanaka’s response to the environmental art trends of the period.