Atsuko Tanaka (1932, b. Osaka, Japan, d. 2005, Nara, Japan) was one of Japan’s most prominent avant-garde artists. Her now legendary Electric Dress (1956) is one of the iconic works of the Gutai movement. Often inspired by objects taken from everyday life, such as calendars, door bells and light bulbs, Tanaka found ways of connecting developments in technology with a new understanding of the body, space, and time. Her abstract paintings, composed of vibrant circles of color connected by lines reminiscent of electronic circuitry, retain a visible trace of her movements as she drew, dripped and traced the paint across the canvas. In 1964, she was awarded the Guggenheim International Award by curator Lawrence Alloway. In the mid-1980s, she was included in major exhibitions across Europe and the U.S., including Japon des avant-gardes at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1986 and Scream Against the Sky at Guggenheim, New York, 1994. In 2001, she had a retrospective in Japan at the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History. Tanaka’s work was included in documenta 12 (2007), the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and the Centre Pompidou’s Elles (2010). Retrospectives of Tanaka’s work have been held at Grey Art Gallery, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and Ikon, in Birmingham, UK. Her work is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, and Dallas Museum of Art, TX, among others.
