20 Facts About On Kawara

On Kawara was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in SoHo, New York City, from 1965 until his death.

On Kawara took part in many solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976.

On Kawara went to Mexico in 1959, where his father was the director of an engineering company.

On Kawara stayed three years, painting, attending art school and exploring the country.

On Kawara travelled through Europe before settling in 1965 in New York City, where he was an intermittent resident until his death.

On Kawara belonged to a broadly international generation of conceptual artists that began to emerge in the mid-1960s, stripping art of personal emotion, reducing it to nearly pure information or idea and greatly playing down the art object.

From 1962 to 1964 On Kawara made about 200 Paris-New York Drawings.

From January 4,1966, On Kawara made a long series of "Date paintings", which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple white lettering set against a solid background.

For example, On Kawara briefly used red for several months in 1967 and then returned to darker hues until 1977.

When On Kawara was unable to complete the painting on the day it was started he immediately destroyed it.

When On Kawara finished a painting, he applied a swatch of the paint mixture he used to a small rectangle that was then glued onto a chart in the journal.

On Kawara created nearly 3,000 date paintings in more than 112 cities worldwide in a project that was planned to end only with his death.

Much like the Today series, On Kawara uses the number of days followed by the date the work was executed as his life-dates.

Between 1968 and 1979, On Kawara created his information series, I Got Up, in which he sent two picture postcards from his location on that morning.

In Pure Consciousness, a traveling exhibition initiated in 1998, On Kawara lent seven Date paintings to kindergartens and schools in Madagascar, Australia, Bhutan, Cote d'Ivoire, Colombia, Turkey, Japan, Finland, Iceland, Palestine, Canada and the United States.

On Kawara's work was exhibited at New York's Dwan Gallery in 1967, and his one-person exhibition "One Million Years" was shown in Dusseldorf, Paris, and Milan in 1971.

On Kawara's work was included in documenta 5,7, and 11, in Kassel, and in the Tokyo Biennale, the Kyoto Biennale, and the Venice Biennale.

On Kawara died in New York on July 10,2014, at the age of 81.

On Kawara's published obituaries state that he was alive for 29,771 days rather than giving dates of birth and death.

On Kawara's 100 Years Calendar indicates that he was born on December 24,1932, not on 2 January 1933, as was officially recorded.