Group Kyushu
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Group Kyushu was an edgy, experimental and rambunctious art group that emerged in Japan in the late 1950s as part of a wave of young artists that would go on to change the look of Japanese modern art in the 1960s and 70s.
Almost none of the members of Group Kysuhu were formally trained as artists, and hailing from the southernmost island of Japan (Kyūshū), they were remote from the center of haute culture, Tokyo. Reacting against what they saw as a stifling exhibition system that relied on personal connections and master-disciple relationships, they put great energy into fighting against the various institutions of the art establishment. The group worked in paint, sculpture and performance. They ripped and burned canvasses, stapled corrugated cardboard, nails, nuts, springs, metal drill shavings, and burlap to their works, assembled all kinds of unwieldy junk assemblages, and were best known for covering much of their work in tar. They also occasionally covered their work in urine and excrement, and have the dubious honor of being the first group to ever be forbidden from exhibiting at the famously permissive Yomiuri Independent exhibition (1949-63).
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