Takesada Matsutani (°1937, Osaka, Japan) is a key figure of post-war Japanese art and one of the last surviving members of the influential Gutai Art Association. Over more than six decades, he has developed a distinctive practice centred on the physical transformation of materials, particularly vinyl glue and graphite, combining experimentation, repetition and gesture in works that explore time, tension and the nature of matter itself.
Matsutani became involved with Gutai during the early 1960s and officially joined the group in 1963. His early works pushed painting beyond the flat surface through the use of vinyl glue, which he manipulated with air, gravity and heat to create swollen, organic forms. These sensuous shapes reflected Gutai’s fundamental interest in allowing materials to express their own physical qualities rather than merely serving as tools for representation.
After receiving a French government grant, Matsutani moved to Paris in 1966 and worked at Stanley William Hayter’s renowned printmaking studio, Atelier 17. During the following decade, his practice evolved toward a more restrained visual language. From the late 1970s onward, graphite became increasingly central to his work, particularly in his monumental Stream series, where countless repeated pencil strokes transform expanses of paper into dense, shimmering surfaces that register the passage of time and sustained physical labour.
Today, Takesada Matsutani continues to live and work in Paris, maintaining an active studio practice well into his late eighties. His unique synthesis of Gutai experimentation, material sensitivity and meditative repetition has secured his position as an important link between the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s and contemporary international abstraction.