Vintage silkscreen of the zodiac sign Sagittarius by Kumi Sugai, 1973

Beautiful limited edition of the work Zodiac Sign Sagittarius IX Sagittarius by Kumi Sugai 1973. Signed and numbered in pencil by the artist 63100. 53 x 50 cm unframed. KUMI SUGAÏ, JAPAN (1919 - 1996) Kumi Sugaï was a painter, sculptor and printmaker born in 1919 in Kobe, Japan. Sugai took up oil painting at the age of nine and became a student at the Osaka School of Fine Arts in 1933, at the age of fourteen. He met the founder of the Gutai Art Association, Jiro Yoshihara, which had a huge impact on his artistic development and experimentalism. He was among the first generation of 20th century Japanese artists to learn Western painting techniques (under Yoshihara's instruction), but he also explored Japanese typography and calligraphy, important in his later work. Sugai left art school early to work in commercial advertising for the Hankyu electric railway company from 1937 to 1945. These formative years of practicing both Western and traditional Japanese mediums provided a dual foundation for his future work. He devoted himself to painting and moved to Paris in 1952, enrolling at the Académie de la grande chaumière, as part of the first generation of post-war Japanese artists to join the international avant-garde art scene. Sugai was immediately noticed in Paris for his delicate touch and his use of abstract gestures resembling primitive forms. He had his first solo exhibition at the Craven Gallery in 1954. In 1955, he made his first published work (Diable Rouge, a lithograph) and decided that printing (lithographs, etchings and later serigraphs) would henceforth be an important part of his work. One of the reasons was to make his work more accessible.