Synopsis
Visual artist Shinkichi Tajiri was born in the United States in 1923 of Japanese parents. He grew up as a true American, but following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour he and many other American Japanese were interned in concentration camps. Later, he was wounded as a front soldier in Italy and, upon still not being accepted as an equal compatriot on his return to America, he emigrated to Europe. Tajiri incorporates his experiences and feelings of being a displaced person in his art works, in which eroticism, violence and speed are the key motives. His work is often characterised as abstract surrealism. His huge, dynamic sculptures from the fifties and sixties are internationally recognised and his ‘knots’ from a later date can be seen all over the world. The artist has now been living and working for forty years in the Netherlands, leading a solitary but active life in a castle in Limburg.