KOTARO NUKAGA to participate in Art Basel in Basel 2026
KOTARO NUKAGA is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel in Basel 2026, taking place from June 18 to 21, 2026.
For this first appearance at the fair, the presentation offers a comprehensive survey of Saori Akutagawa（1924 – 1966）, tracing the development of her pictorial language across a career of little more than fifteen years. The selection ranges from rare early oil paintings and signature batik works to preparatory studies and drawings, culminating in oil paintings from the 1960s made following her move to the United States, where her practice increasingly turned toward abstraction.
What really matters is going beyond technique to unleash something deeper and more meaningful. After all, my goal is to get my unique essence onto the canvas. There’s absolutely no need to strive for perfection. What I’m looking for is something defiant. Passionate. Intense.
（April 1954, diary of Saori Akutagawa）
Akutagawa can be situated among the few women artists who shaped the postwar Japanese avant-garde, notably by elevating batik—then largely confined to the domain of craft—into a rigorous pictorial practice. After graduating from the Vocal Department of Tokyo Music School（now Tokyo University of the Arts), she withdrew from a musical career following her husband, the composer Yasushi Akutagawa, who remarked that “a household does not need two musicians.” In searching for a means to speak in her own voice, she returned to painting—an activity she had long cherished since girls’ secondary school—and began anew. In the early 1950s, while studying painting at Inokuma Genichiro’s research institute, she also learned the batik dyeing technique under Michikata Noguchi. At a time when dyeing was largely confined to the realm of craft, Akutagawa incorporated it into a rigorous pictorial practice and reconstructed it as “a new language for articulating the self.” Her early focus on the theme of “woman” later expanded to subjects drawn from Folk Tale and Myth, culminating in forceful batik compositions filled with archetypal, myth-inflected imagery.
In the Woman series, strikingly diverse images of women coexist. On one hand, Akutagawa depicts figures with hair bristling, shouting or seemingly bursting into loud laughter—women whose unguarded emotions and unrestrained vitality confront the viewer. On the other, works such as Woman XII and Human（C)—included in this presentation—compose the figure through rhythmic combinations of line and plane in vivid color. Their plant-like organic forms convey a sense of elemental life force that surpasses the realm of individual emotion, transforming the imagery toward a more universal, archetypal form.
The emergence of the “Folk Tales” and “Myth” series was shaped in part by Akutagawa’s travels through Europe, the Soviet Union, and China—experiences that prompted a renewed reconsideration of identity. Encountering the world beyond Japan sharpened her desire to pursue expressions grounded in everyday life and social realities in Japan.
A further turning point came in 1955, when Akutagawa encountered major figures of the Mexican mural movement—Rufino Tamayo, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, among others—at The Mexican Art Exhibition held at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. The exhibition sharpened a question that resonated with her own postwar search for self: how might art participate in the formation of collective identity and how should one—both as a Japanese person and as an individual—stand up within society? Works such as From Kojiki（Record of Ancient Matters)（176.0 × 1346.0 cm, Setagaya Art Museum collection, 1957）and From the Ancient Chronicle “Kojiki”（172.0 × 660.0 cm, Nagoya City Art Museum collection, 1957）visualize scenes of divine birth and conflict through forceful composition and high chromatic intensity. Here, creation myth becomes a vehicle for staging universal human antagonisms—rendered with an urgency that is unmistakably Akutagawa’s.
In the same year, Akutagawa was selected by Taro Okamoto to exhibit dyeing works in the Taro Okamoto Room（Room 9）at the 40th Nika Exhibition, where she received the Tokutai Prize.
The selection positioned her as one of the most closely watched young artists of her generation. She also joined the “Seisakusha Kondankai”, a circle that included contemporaries such as Tatsuo Ikeda and On Kawara; together with Taizo Yoshinaka, the four artists held two group exhibitions. Akutagawa’s uninhibited and formally inventive style was never an imitation of prevailing trends, but the result of an uncompromising exploration of the self. At a moment when oil painting dominated the art world and dyeing was often regarded as merely craft-based, her decision to place batik at the core of her pictorial practice was a rare innovation—one that dramatically expanded the possibilities of painting itself.
In 1959, Akutagawa moved to the United States, studying design in Los Angeles before relocating to New York. There she enrolled at The Art Students League of New York, an institution known for its relative openness across race, class, and gender. While grounded in traditional technical training, the school also functioned as a laboratory for new currents such as Pop Art and Minimalism. Immersed in this fervent environment of young artists who challenged academic boundaries and stimulated one another, Akutagawa pushed her practice into further unknown territory. Her work shifted toward abstract oil paintings characterized by restrained color and combinations of organic forms. These works may suggest a resonance with the emerging Minimalism of the American art scene, yet her intensely considered materiality and organically drawn lines—like the rhythm of breathing—refuse any easy assimilation to fashion, testifying instead to an irreducible artistic will. The works embody a profound spirituality and formal beauty distinct from rational, inorganic aesthetics. This transition from dyeing to oil painting has often been discussed by curators and specialists, both in Japan and abroad, as a crucial turning point in her oeuvre. The booth presents representative works from this period.
Akutagawa returned to Japan in 1962. She continued to present work vigorously after her return, her creative drive undiminished; however, in 1966 she died suddenly from pregnancy-related toxemia. Despite her death at only forty-one, Akutagawa established a singular position in postwar art through bold investigations that ranged from the raw immediacy of lived bodily feeling to fundamental human conflicts projected onto myth. Since a 2009 retrospective at the Yokosuka Museum of Art, her work has been steadily reappraised and has gained international visibility through exhibitions such as ‘TOKYO 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde’ at MoMA and acquisitions by institutions including M+（Hong Kong). Marking the centenary of her birth in 2024, a collaborative relay-style project across ten museums holding her works（including the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki; Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; Toyohashi City Museum of Art & History; Kariya City Art Museum; Nagoya City Art Museum; Takamatsu Art Museum; Yokosuka Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo）further demonstrated the breadth of her legacy. In subsequent years, her works have continued to be shown in exhibitions such as ‘Modern Images of Ancient Clay Figures’（The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2024), ‘Eyes on MEXICO’（The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, 2025), ‘The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation ‘(M+, Hong Kong, 2025), and ’Anti-Action: Artist-Women’s Challenges and Responses in Postwar Japan’（Toyota Municipal Museum of Art; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, 2026). Together, these multifaceted presentations attest to the pioneering force of the world she forged.
Akutagawa’s practice has often been discussed through the lens of feminism and as a confrontation with social constraint, given both her historical context and her sustained engagement with the theme of “woman.” Such perspectives remain crucial to understanding her. Yet what she ultimately fixed her gaze upon may be something that effortlessly transcends even those frameworks: a more fundamental expression of the human condition. Words from her diary—“I have grasped the work of my life,” and “the happiness of being able to express myself and speak to people” — suggest that the wellspring of her art lay not primarily in opposition to circumstance, but in the sheer joy of expression itself. In the radiance of the “expression” she seized with her own hands, she lived with uncommon freedom and intensity. Deflecting prescribed attributes and expectations with ease, she remained, with a disarming innocence and audacity, devoted to art as a creator. We hope viewers will encounter—directly and vividly—the overwhelming energy that her work continues to release.
【Exhibition Detail】
Art Basel in Basel 2026
Venue: Messe Basel （Messeplatz 10, 4058 Basel, Switzerland）
Period:
VIP Days（Invitation Only）
■First Choice
June 16 11:00 – 16:00
■First Choice and Preview
June 16 16:00 – 20:00
■ First Choice and Preview, One Day VIP & Two Day VIP Card holders
June 17 11:00 – 20:00
Vernissage
June 17 16:00 – 20:00
Public Days
June 18 – 21 11:00 – 19:00
Artist: Saori Akutagawa
Booth No: D1（Hall 2.0/ Feature Sector）
URL: https://www.artbasel.com/basel
