On Kawara

(Japanese, 1933–2014)

On Kawara was an influential Japanese Conceptual artist. Best known for his Today series of paintings, Kawara produced simple, two-color acrylic paintings to document each day he woke up alive in the date, language, and format of the place in which they were made. He made almost 3,000 of these paintings in 112 different cities between January 4, 1966 and his death in 2014, with the body of work serving as an examination of the banality of existence and the passage of time. Born on December 24, 1932 in Kariya, Japan, he went on to study art and travel in Mexico where his father was the director of an engineering company. Much of Kawara’s later life was spent traveling between New York and Paris, marking the differences of life around the world through his serial artworks. He exhibited at several documenta events in Kassel, the Dia Art Foundation in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Kyoto Biennale, and the Tokyo Biennale, among others. Today, his works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Kawara died on July 10, 2014 in New York, NY.