Yoshitomo Nara (Born 1959) was born in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. He’s a Contemporary artist who’s known for the Neo-Pop paintings that feature the buoyant style and innocent motifs of comics and children’s books. His most frequent subjects are cartoonish animals and children, executed in an economical, flattened style. He specializes in flat, 2D drawings that depict bigheaded, sulky characters that are corrosive yet cunningly cute. Nara is also a prolific draughtsman and sculptor. Nara has had solo exhibitions at the Asia Society Museum in New York, NY; Blum & Poe in Santa Monica, CA; Pace Prints in New York, NY; Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; and many other institutions. He is represented by Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, and by Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, and he currently lives and works in Germany and Japan. His pictures pack a warped visual glee that appeal to a broad range of viewers.
Nara burst onto the international art scene during the 1990s, showing his work at solo exhibitions across the globe, from Berlin and Tokyo to Los Angeles and New York. Within just a few years he had achieved massive following for his work, which was and are still admired by punk kids and art critics alike. From 1979 to 1981, he studied art at the Musashino Art University. After graduation, he continued his studies at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in Nagoya, Japan. He earned his bachelor of fine arts and his master of fine arts in 1985 and in 1987 respectively. Besides acrylic and oil paintings, he crafts installations that take up whole rooms.
