?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
GO MISHIMA (1924-1988)
Untitled (Crawling Nude). Mixed media including watercolor and pencil on wove paper. 381 x 559 mm; 15 x 22 inches. Circa 1970. Artist stamp on verso.
Provenance: Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art Collection, New York.
Mishima, who took his name from his friend, the author Yukio Mishima, was one of the earliest and most influential post-war Japanese homoerotic artists. He began his career painting doll faces and contributing illustrations to magazines. His work went on to appear in magazines such as the S & M focused Fuzokukitan (in the 1960s), Barazoku and Sabu, both in the 1970s. His work can be characterized by the absence of background imagery, the stillness of his subject's faces and the overall Kabuki-like, tranquil nature of his compositions. "Mishima was the first artist to present the image of gay Japanese macho" (Gay Erotic Art in Japan p. 170). Tattoos and bloodshed are prominent themes in his work.
