Toshio Saeki (artist)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"If you look at Saeki’s art outside of its cultural sphere, you may be troubled by its violence." - Robert Crumb. "Saeki, 55, is the godfather of Japanese erotica — the one illustrator in the frenetic, oversexed, comics-crazy nation whose imagination outpaces all others.""In the realm of the senses" (2001) by Stephen Lemons |
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Toshio Saeki (1945 - 2019) was a Japanese artist of mainly erotic art. His works combine classic Japanese imagery in very bizarre, violent and sexual settings.
One of his typical illustrations finds inspiration in Edogawa Rampo’s "The Human Chair" (1925).
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Life
Saeki was born in Miyazaki Prefecture and grew up in Osaka from the age of four. Little is known about his family background and the rest of his private life. Saeki deliberately avoided the public eye because, in his opinion, this allowed him to be freer and more provocative in his art.
He studied Western painting in Kyōto from 1960 and then worked as an advertising designer in Osaka from 1963 to 1966. He gave up this job to travel the world. He traveled to Europe, the Soviet Union and the Middle East, among other places. From 1969, Saeki lived in Tokyo. The 1970s also saw an increasingly open approach to sexuality in Japan. However, Toshio Saeki was not active in the sex club scene, despite his genre. He also had no models, but usually painted from his head. He said in an interview:
- I don’t think I could draw these scenes, if I was really into it myself […] I have to be distanced from it to be able to draw it in this way.
In the late 1980s, Saeki moved away from the Tokyo metropolis and from then on lived and worked in his studio in the rural Chiba Prefecture. Saeki left Japan only once throughout his life. Saeki died on November 21, 2019, but his death was not announced until January 2020.
Work
Toshio Saeki was interested in Western art. An important inspiration for him was the Frenchman Tomi Ungerer. Saeki's works often depict sexuality and brutality in a very explicit way, combining traditional Shunga and Yōkai styles with elements of Western art.
During his Tokyo period, his publications included the book Saeki Toshio Gashū (佐伯俊男画集) in 1970, and some of his sketches appeared in the men's magazine Heibon Punch (平凡パンチ). Also in 1970, a solo exhibition was held in Paris at Gare Saint-Lazare , but his originals were stolen. These publications and exhibitions drew growing public interest to him. The cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1972 album Some Time in New York City features a drawing by Saeki of a devil-like figure attacking a young woman in school uniform with a knife. 1979 saw the release of the short film Demain la petite fille sera en retard à l'école by Michel Boschet, which was based on Saeki's drawings and won the César for Best Animated Short Film the following year. Toshio Saeki has had exhibitions in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and Taipei, among others, as well as at Art Basel Hong Kong.
His works have been collected in books such as Chimusi I, Chimusi II (distributed in the US by Last Gasp), and In-Ken-Ka.
More recently there has been Fièvres nocturnes (2022).
Toshio Saeki: The Early Works (1997)
Toshio Saeki: The Early Works (1997) is a book of early work by Toshio Saeki
Blurb:
Before Toshio Saeki worked in his current palette of bright colors, he expressed the darker and more chaotic aspects of unbridled eroticism in black and white, with the occasional and dramatic splash of a single primary color. In this lavishly illustrated book, Saeki’s disturbing iconography reveals links to the past and simultaneously indicates the even more bizarre twists his work would take in the future. Early Works also includes the panel-by-panel replication of a Saeki manga story. Japanese text only.
Selected exhibitions
- 2019: Banshou Kaiki – Toshio Saeki Works Exhibition, Jiu Xiang Ju Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
- 2016: SELECTED WORKS 1972–2016, Narwhal, Toronto, Canada
- 2016: Toshio Saeki Print Exhibition, Kartel, Tel Aviv, Israel
- 2014: TOSHIO SAEKI, AISHONANZUKA, Hong Kong
- 2010: Toshio Saeki Early Works, 111minnagallery, San Francisco, USA
- 2009: ONIKAGE, Span Art Gallery, Tokyo
- 2006: Saeki Toshio 70, Kyōto and Tokyo
- 1999: Yumemanji, Span Art Gallery, Tokyo
- 1985: Toshio Saeki Solo Exhibit, Gray Box Gallery, San José, USA
- 1971: Akaihako, Gallery Décor, Tokyo
- 1970: Toshio Saeki Book Release Solo Exhibit, Paris, France
See also
- Fetish art
- Heibon Punch
- Demain la petite fille sera en retard à l'école
- Ero-guro
- Roland Topor
- Some Time in New York City
