The Berardo Collection

Japanese painter, draughtsman and Conceptual artist who has worked, mainly, in the United States. In 1951, he moved to Tokyo, where he exhibited some of his works and, in 1959, he travelled to Mexico and various European countries, settling in New York in 1965. In 1966, he produced the first of the Date Paintings series, executed in various countries he visited and that consisted of the superimposing of the simple register of dates in letters and typographic numbers on cuttings from local newspapers. According to the artist, the aim of these paintings is for the artist and observer to share the numbers that signify a date they have both lived. In 1968, he began his I Went (maps of roads travelled by the artist in a single day) and I Met (a list of the people he met in a day) series. In 1969, he created a ten-volume work entitled One Million Years which consisted of a typed list of a million years. After 1970, he began sending telegrams to various people with the following text: "I'm still alive". He took part in the Conceptual Art exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Berlin, in 1972. In 1977 and 1982, he took part in documenta 6 and 7 in Kassel. His systematic works exploring concepts of time and space have led to Kawara being considered one of the main precursors of Conceptual Art.