Tadanori Yokoo :: yokoo_1_small

Tadanori Yokoo Gallery - Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter.
Tadanori Yokoo (pronounced \"yoko-o\"), born in Hy?go Prefecture, Japan, in 1936, is one of Japan\'s most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists. He began his career as a stage designer for avant garde theatre in Tokyo. His early work shows the influence of the New York based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular) but Yokoo himself cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences. In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the \"Japanese Andy Warhol\" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo\'s complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original.
In 1981 he unexpectedly \"retired\" from commercial work and took up painting. His career as a fine artist continues to this day with numerous exhibitions of his paintings every year, but alongside this he remains fully engaged and prolific as a graphic designer.