Kitawaki Noboru: To See the Universe in a Seed

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, draws upon its extensive collection to offer a different perspective on the work of avant-garde painter Kitawaki Noboru (1901-1951). Active in Kyoto during the ’30s and ’40s, Kitawaki has until now been assessed in terms of the influence he derived from the Surrealists. While this aspect is present – the maple seeds in 1937 work ‘Airport’ can alternatively be viewed as aeroplanes – this exhibition argues that the artist’s deeper aim was to decode the invisible laws of the world around us, and present a unification of heaven and earth as if condensed into a single seed.