They bear a semblance to a fusion of medieval knights and Japanese samurai warriors: the four monumental rust-colored sculptures – entitled “Guardians” – designed by Japanese-American artist Shinkichi Tajiri for the city bridge in Venlo. They were unveiled two years ago by Queen Beatrix. According to the sculptor, the sculptures served as “guardians of the city”. Yesterday, it was announced by his family that Tajiri, a sculptor of the Cobra movement, passed away this past weekend. Shinkichi Tajiri was born in 1923 in Los Angeles as a child of Japanese aristocratic parents, but left America in 1948 in protest against the treatment of over 120,000 Japanese people in his home country during World War II: they were considered state enemies and imprisoned in concentration camps. This also happened to Tajiri himself, his mother, sister, and brothers. “Solely based on my appearance, I was discriminated against, mistreated, and demonized.” In an attempt to leave the concentration camp, he enlisted in the US Army, was sent to Italy, suffered a serious leg injury, and spent five months in a hospital in Rome. While still in America, Tajiri studied at the Art Institute in Chicago. After the war, he first moved to Paris, where he studied under Ossip Zadkine and Fernand Léger, and later to Amsterdam. There, he joined the artists of the Cobra movement. Together with, among others, Karel Appel, Constant Nieuwenhuys, and Corneille, he exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in the infamous 1949 exhibition organized by museum director Willem Sandberg.
Displayed in the Stedelijk was his initial warrior. A decade later, he co-founded Group A’dam together with fellow sculptors Wessel Couzijn, Carel Visser, and Carel Kneulman. Tajiri became well-known to the public for his more abstract work: towering “knots” constructed from bronze, cast iron, steel, and plastic, which have appeared in city centers all over the world. One of these Knots serves as a Meeting Point for lost travelers at Schiphol airport. They are somewhat detached from his war trauma, and align more with the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1960s and 1970s. As a symbol of “the harmony between simplicity and strength,” as the artist explained.
Not to say that the war ever left his thoughts. In the 1990s, Tajiri returned to the theme of warriors. In total, he would create dozens of them. With the atrocities of the Second World War as his inspiration. “The nightmares, the dead, the wounded, they stay with you,” he said when asked. “The only way to live with it is to create images.”
In addition to being a sculptor, Tajiri was also a painter, photographer, and filmmaker. He created experimental films about smoking marijuana, an ode to the work of his second wife (Dutch sculptor Ferdie Jansen), and pin-ups interspersed with images of Richard Nixon (Nix-on-Nixon). He lived at Kasteel Scheres in Baarlo, Limburg since 1962. In 2007, Tajiri was appointed Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. In that same year, a tumor was discovered in his pancreas, and he passed away on the night of Saturday to Sunday. Shinkichi Tajiri was 85 years old.
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