Lot 546 D

„The pictorial act of Shimamoto, to remain within the metaphor of Zen, is like the touch of a stick that wakes the disciple in meditation. It does not show, it does not say but puts in a condition to show and say. Thus, instead of proposing itself, as it usually happens in the West, as foreign to life - therefore as its surpassing, sublimation, study or even as a method of understanding it - art is part of life, immediate and pure. This idea of art Shimamoto takes from the teachings of Yoshihara and from the way in which he, while revealing the truth of Action Painting and the Western avant-gardes, shows him also the richness and the immediateness of action within one's own traditional culture. It was this concept which impressed him most together with the art of children […] which is totally spontaneous and free of any worry about having to demonstrate something, and instead totally given to its being, its being a founding part of life. The Western avant-gardes, on the other hand remained basically foreign to him, at least on the level of motivation, because on those of the formal solutions they were undeniably closer. But if action for Pollock, with which his work is often associated, had all implications of the mental and existential type, in Shimamoto it is simply the acting in itself without other reasoning. A sort of pure and simple aesthetic being.” (Lorenzo Mango, Between Opera and Event, in: Achille Bonito Oliva (Hg.), Shozo Shimamoto, Samurai, acrobata dello sguardo 1950-2008, Ausst.Kat. Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Mailand 2008, S.42).