Kyoto 1928 – 2013

Hisao Domoto was born in 1928 in Kyoto into a family of artists and art lovers. His father collected Japanese ceramics, calligraphy and painting, while his uncle, the painter Domoto Insho (1891-1975), won the Order of Cultural Merit in 1961.

In 1942 he entered the Kyoto School of Visual Arts and approached classical painting Japanese. After several trips to Europe, in 1954 he moved to Paris, where he lived until his return to Japan in 1965. In these years, he met the most important artists of the period and in 1957 he was included by Michael Tapié in the exhibition “L’art mondial contemporain à Tokyo “, through which Domoto introduced the French art critic to the Gutai movement.

After his first solo show at the Galerie Stadler in Paris, he is invited to the main exhibitions of the Gutai movement and Informal artists, including in the 1958 show ” The International Art of a New Era: USA, Japan, Europe “at the Osaka International Art Festival. His art progressively passes towards a more refined painting linked to lyrical abstraction.

Domoto has had numerous solo shows at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, at the Minami Gallery in Tokyo and at the Galerie Stadler in Paris. His important personal exhibitions were held at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (1979) and at the Tokyo Ikebukuro Seibu Museum (1987). Domoto was also included in the main collective exhibitions on the mutual influences between Japanese and Western arts.