Lot 37: Blue - Work by Drill

Saito Yoshishige (1904-2001) Blue - Work by Drill Executed in 1960 Oil on drilled wood-panel collage 56 x 67 cm. 74.3 x 85.2 cm. (including frame) Framed and glazed

56 x 67 cm.

Purchased directly from the Estate of Yoshishige Saito, following his death in 2001.

As a young man in the 1920s, Saito was inspired by Futurist/ Dadaist artists and groups which encouraged “art as totality”, as well as Constructivist ideology which promoted “real materials” and “real space”. These influences lead him to create a series of painted-wood reliefs in 1930s which did not easily win public acceptance at the time as they seemed to be neither painting nor sculpture. However, they set the stage for a career characterised by great freedom of expression and led directly to the painted, gouged and drilled wood panels of the 1960s. These “electric-drill paintings” during 1960-63 reveal Saito’s interest in the process over the end result, stating in 1964 that “To me, what’s necessary is not the result but the cause – making impressions of [drilling] acts and the process”.1 1. Saito Yoshishige, Saito Yoshishige, (Tokyo, 1964), in Alexandra Monroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, (New York, 1994), p. 308 Attached to the verso of the work is an attestation of authenticity of the work, signed and sealed by Saito's second son Saito Shimon.