18 Facts About Ay-O

Ay-O was born Iijima Takao in Ibaraki prefecture in 1931.

Ay-O started his career in the Demokrato Artists Association, along with artists Ei-Q and On Kawara and the photographer Eikoh Hosoe.

The influence of these values on Ay-O can be seen in a series of early paintings over which he painted a large X because he thought they were not original enough.

In 1955, Ay-O founded a group called Jitsuzonsha along with printmaker and writer Masuo Ikeda, artist Hiroshi Manabe, and others.

Also this period inspired Ay-O's to pick the title of Sartre's novel as his name.

In 1961, Yoko Ono introduced him to George Maciunas of Fluxus, and Ay-O formally joined Fluxus in 1963.

Ay-O established a reputation in the avant-gardes of Japan, Europe and the United States.

Ay-O represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1971.

Ay-O built the famed "Tactile Rainbow Room" at the Osaka World's Fair in 1970.

In Japan Ay-O is part of the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and Kyoto.

In 2001 Ay-O had a room in the special exhibit "La fluxus Constellation" in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa.

Ay-O did his most complete retrospective exhibitions in Japan - first in the Fukui Art Museum in 2006 organized the first retrospective.

From December 2023 to May 2024, M+ in Hong Kong hosted a monographic exhibition of Ay-O, featuring oil paintings, sculptures, and prints spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s.

The Finger Boxes are works of art by Ay-O that are the most tactile works of art in the Fluxus project.

Ay-O is said to have learned of this and claimed the invention for himself.

True to his Japanese beginning and the Democrato movement Ay-O took some special care to produce print version of his work.

Ay-O has participated and organised such happenings since the 1960s and continues until recent times.

On paper Ay-O signs using roman letters and his kanji.