Vessel in a modernist form of grouped cylinders set on a conical foot ring. Of unglazed and glazed ceramic ware, the surface ornamented with a stamped floral design, partially glazed in cream slip and dots of iron-oxide glaze. By Yagi Kazuo (1918 – 1979). Showa era, circa 1957.

With the tomobako or original box, inscribed on the exterior of the lid: Unohana Mon Sokotsubo or Unohana (the flower deutzia crenata) Design Double Mouthed Vessel, and signed: Yagi Kazuo Saku or Made by Yagi Kazuo, and sealed.

Born in Kyoto, the eldest son of the potter Yagi Isso, Yagi Kazuo grew up in a world of classical Chinese and Japanese ceramics. His father was fluent in the idioms of Ming and Ching porcelains and reputedly excelled in both celadon and milky-blue glazed wares. After graduating from elementary school in 1931, Yagi Kazuo entered the sculpture department of the Kyoto Municipal High School of Arts and Crafts. Apparently, Kazuo’s father wanted Kazuo to learn the fundamentals of three-dimensional art and Kazuo to continue the family tradition of ceramics. After graduation in 1927, Kazuo entered the Kyoto Institute of Ceramics where his father had studied. The Institute polished Kazuo’s training in classical ceramics. At this time, he also joined the Ceramic Sculpture Association of Japan, and in 1939 participated in the Association’s first exhibition, held at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in the fashionable Nihonbashi district of Tokyo.

Shortly after that exhibition, in April of 1939, Yagi Kazuo entered the Japanese military and was dispatched to the Guangdong area. There, he fell ill and was sent to Wakayama to recuperate. Discharged from the army in August of 1940, he returned to Kyoto and took up ceramics once more. His work from this period reflected an attraction to avant-garde Western art movements such as cubism, surrealism and abstraction. While his younger brother was able to find acceptance at the 6th Shin-Bunten in 1942, Kazuo’s own applications to exhibit were repeatedly denied, perhaps because his work was considered too experimental for the vetting committee. The previous year, Kazuo had shown a pair of distorted ash trays in the 6th Rekitei Art Association exhibition, and it is unlikely such rebellious work would have appealed to the pre-war art establishment. From 1943 until the end of the Pacific War, Kazuo temporarily stopped potting and worked instead as an assistant teacher at a junior high school in Kyoto.

With the uncertainty and change that followed the end of the war, many young artists like Yagi Kazuo wanted to pursue art that would reflect the new era. After resigning from his teaching position, Kazuo successfully submitted a sculptural ceramic work to the 2nd Nitten in the autumn of 1946. As irreverent as his earlier ashtrays, this was a warped figure of a pig ornamented with butterflies. He returned for his second and last time to the 3rd Nitten the following year. In 1948, Kazuo showed a black and white vase with decoration inspired by Paul Klee at the 4th Kyoten (Kyoto Exhibition), and the piece won the Mayor’s Prize. In 1948 – 1950, Kazuo helped found the Sodeisha (Crawling Through Mud Association), along with Suzuki Osamu, Yamada Hikaru, Matsui Yoshisuke and Kano Tetsuo. From this point on, Yagi Kazuo avoided the formal Nitten venue, instead showing with his fellow artists in the Sodeisha exhibitions.

In 1950, four of Yagi Kazuo’s pieces were included in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work from this time struggled to reconcile his love of Korean ceramics and his fascination with the work of contemporary, abstract painters from the West. It also rejected the utilitarian nature of traditional ceramics. He was strongly influenced by Isamu Noguchi’s terracotta works as well as by Picasso’s ceramics. Unlike his father Yagi Isso, Yagi Kazuo never thought of himself as bounded by the limits of traditional craft. Instead, from the beginning of his career, he felt himself a sculptor in clay and an artist in the modern sense. Kazuo’s rejection of his father’s world and his rebellious temperament marked his work and reputation for the rest of his life. Kazuo would go on to become one of the most influential of the revolutionary Sodeisha potters, one whose work overturned the classical tradition of Kyoto ceramics and opened new paths for Japanese artists working in clay.

The Sodeisha potters’ work changed the course of Japanese ceramics for the rest of the century.

For a similar example of Yagi Kazuo’s work, c.f. Yagi Kazuo – A Retrospective, page 60, number 30.

This vessel mockingly dismembers and reassembles the form of a flower vase, adding two mouths to a cylinder set on its side atop a cone. The work rejects any notion of practical function and instead asserts itself as an objet or object, a French word adopted by Yagi Kazuo and others at this time to describe their forays into abstract sculpture.