Kenji Yoshida

An exhibition of new paintings and selected works - including large-scale panel pieces - by the well-known Japanese artist, Kenji Yoshida.

This will be his fourth solo show at the October Gallery.

Born in 1924, in Ikeda City (part of present-day Osaka) Yoshida studied art under the great Hayashi Kiyoshi and also Furukido, before those studies were interrupted by the war.

Selected for training as a kami-kaze pilot, Yoshida was extremely lucky to survive his teens - though the majority of his close friends were not so fortunate.

After the close of hostilities, the memory of the traumatic experience of having walked so near to death spurred Yoshida to throw himself single-mindedly into his art again, and devote himself to a sustained exploration of the life-affirming forces that he had seen so nearly extinguished.

From that point onwards the majority of his work has carried the single, most telling of all titles, "Life".

In 1964, Yoshida moved to Paris where he has lived ever since.

His quest for purity led him to prefer the fundamental forms of the square and the circle.

His research into colour led him to two essential elements, black and white.

He then introduced two materials that surpass the category of colour, gold and silver leaf.

These metals bestow on the painted surface a dimension both temporal and sublime.