Art history timeline atlas
Gutai, Mono-ha And Postwar Asian Experiment
Postwar Asian experiment expanded painting, material, body and environment in ways that cannot be treated as secondary to Euro-American modernism.
Postwar Experiments And Global Networks
Historical context
Gutai artists used feet, bodies, smoke, electricity and outdoor events to test matter and action. Mono-ha emphasized encounters between raw materials, site and perception.
Korean Dansaekhwa brought repetition, surface, discipline and material process into a postwar context shaped by politics, scarcity and reconstruction.
How to look
- Look beyond one center. Postwar art moves through New York, Paris, Mexico City, Lagos, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Seoul and many other networks.
- Notice how the artwork becomes action, environment, document, idea, institution critique, body politics or public argument.
Makers, works, and materials
Date range: c. 1954-1980
Regions: East Asia, Japan, Korea
Media: Performance, Installation, Painting, Object, Documentation
Movements: Gutai, Mono-ha, Dansaekhwa, Postwar Asian art
Makers to research
- Kazuo Shiraga
- Atsuko Tanaka
- Lee Ufan
- Park Seo-Bo
Named works to compare
- Gutai performances
- Mono-ha object installations
- Dansaekhwa paintings
Painting with the whole body
Kazuo Shiraga famously painted with his feet while suspended from a rope, turning canvas into a record of force, balance and bodily risk.
Legacy and why it matters
This entry gives the atlas a postwar Asian route where performance, object and material experiment reshape global contemporary art.