24. Hayashi Yasuo  林康夫

Yasuo Hayashi was born in 1928 to a ceramist father. Initially, he wanted to become a painter and, when he was 12 years old, attended the painting course at the Kyoto Municipal Arts and Crafts School. A few years later, In 1943, he joined the Miho Naval Air Corps as a trainee for the 13th Naval First Class Flight Preparatory Course, and in 1945 he even joined the kamikaze corps, a rigorously-selected company of aviators who were given the honor of carrying out suicide missions for emperor and homeland. Fortunately, however, the war would be ended before such an order was given. After returning to Kyoto, he again studied painting, this time at the Kyoto Municipal College of Art. However, for Hayashi, who had had rigorous training experience as a war pilot since the age of 16, Japanese painting was not challinging anymore. He decided to help his father in his ceramic business; his father, however, encouraged him to develop his own creativity. This led him to sort into the world of avant-garde art. In 1947 he founded the avant-garde ceramic research group "Shikokai" with several other ceramists. The traditional functionality of Japanese ceramics, in the form of vases, bowls and other objects for the tea ceremony was abandoned, and replaced by ceramics as independant art objects without or only with a secondary relationship to function. This abandonment of the traditional functionality of a ceramic object was not initially well received in Japan. However, his work was well received abroad from the start, and as early as 1950 he was selected for "Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Art Exhibition" at the Cernusky Museum in France. In later years he received great appreciation for his extraordinary works full of illusionary effects and executed in refined techniques. He received many awards including the Grand Prix at the Biennale Internationale de Vallauris in France and the Kyoto Art Culture Prize and was named Kyoto City Person of Cultural Merits in 1998. His work can be found at The National Museum of Modern Art, in Tokyo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

Prelude '96-B - Minneapolis Institute of Art