Oil on canvas stretched and mounted on cut, geometric-shaped wood, 1978. 1155x1740 mm; 45 1/2x68 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower center verso.
Ex-collection private collection, Chicago.
Nagano (1928-2008) was a Japanese-born artist who studied at Kanazawa Fine Arts University during the turbulent era of the occupation of Japan and began showing his work in Tokyo galleries as part of the "Timism" group of Japanese abstract artists. In the early 1960s he decided to live the life of an expatriate artist and sailed across the Pacific on a tramp steamer bound for Santiago, Chile. By 1965 he had settled in New York, living in a tenement on the Lower East Side, unable to afford canvas he painted on bed sheets. By this time, he'd begun experimenting with the geometric, shaped canvas format that has come to characterize his work and for which his popularity gained at galleries and public collections in New York and throughout the United States.
