Born in Kyoto in 1944, Akihiko Kuroda had a lifelong interest in art and painted his first work at the age of four. His family had a great influence on Kuroda as a boy. His father brought magazines like Le Minotaur from Paris. Through these magazines, Kuroda discovered the work of painters such as Picasso and Dali, inspiring him during the early stages of his artistic career. These resources were invaluable to the self-taught. In the 1960s, Kuroda traveled around Europe, finally deciding to settle in Paris in 1970. Kuroda struggled during his early years in Paris, until chance encounters with French-American writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, Spanish artist Joan Miru00f3, and gallery owner Adrian Margut decided his fate. Until I changed it, I was going to give up and go back to Japan. Aki Kuroda’s famous participation in the 11th Paris Biennale in 1980 signaled the beginning of his career. Kuroda flouted traditional hierarchies and in 1993 became the youngest artist to have a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Prominent artists Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami acknowledged Kuroda’s influence on their careers in their memoirs. In 2007, Kuroda became the first Japanese artist to be exhibited at the Beijing Imperial Museum and TS1 Museum in China. In Japan, Aki Kuroda’s work is in several public collections around the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. In France, it is housed in the collections of the Marguerite Aime Mag Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Paris, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg. In Ireland, Hugh Lane City Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin. And in Holland at the Peter Steibson Foundation in Amsterdam.
www.ftn-books.com has the Maeght publication from 1986 now available
