Anti-Action: Artist-Women’s Challenges and Responses in Postwar Japan

Date

December 16, 2025 - February 8, 2026

Location

Special Exhibition Gallery (1st floor)

In Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, female artists attracted attention in the realm of avant-garde art. This trend was encouraged by the art informel movement that came from abroad, but when the stylistic concept of “action painting” was introduced next, women painters disappeared from most criticism. The notion of “action,” such as boldness and strength, closely associated with masculinity, caused a swingback to the traditional gender order.

This exhibition is an attempt to reinterpret modern and contemporary Japanese art history from the perspective disclosed by Nakajima Izumi in her 2019 book Anti-action: Post-war Japanese Art and Women Artists. Based on the perspective of “anti-action,” which aims to review art history from the viewpoint of gender studies, this project will focus on the activities of Kusama Yayoi, Tanaka Atsuko, and Fukushima Hideko, who are featured in the book, as well as other artists who until now have rarely been discussed as subjects of art history. This exhibition will introduce the results of current art historical research and provide new perspectives on the act of evaluating works of art.

Yamazaki Tsuruko, *Work*, 1964
Vinyl paint on cotton cloth and board, 183.0×137.5 cm, Ashiya City Museum of Art ＆ History
©Estate of Tsuruko Yamazaki courtesy of LADS Gallery, Osaka and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo

Exhibiting Artists

Akana Keiko（1924-98）、Akutagawa(Madokoro) Saori（1924-66）、Enomoto Kazuko（1930-）、 Emi Kinuko（1923-2015）、Kusama Yayoi（1929-）、Shiraga Fujiko（1928-2015）、 Tada Minami（1924-2014）、Tanaka Atsuko（1932-2005）、Tanaka Tazuko（1913-2015）、 Tabe Mitsuko（1933-2024）、Fukushima Hideko（1927-1997）、Miyawaki Aiko（1929-2014）、 Mōri Mami（1926-2022）、Yamazaki Tsruko（1925-2019）