Miyanaga Tōzan Ⅲ（Miyanaga Rikichi）

Belonging to the second generation of Sōdeisha (Crawling through Mud Association), today Miyanaga Rikichi is perhaps the last living and working master of this influential Japanese avant-garde ceramic group that was active throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Established in Kyoto in 1948, Sōdeisha sought to revolutionize the long-established traditional Japanese pottery-making. Adopting the language of Abstract Expressionism, the Sōdeisha artists deprived the functionality of ceramic utensils, and transformed ceramics from objects of daily use to objects of aesthetic value. Inspired by such ideology at his youth,
the Kyoto ceramist family-born Rikichi set out to establish his versatile artistic style in late 1950s. The monumental clay objects created immediately after Rikichi’s returning from the United States in 1961 are of particular interest, for these demonstrate the young Rikichi’s experiment and exploration of the American avant-gardism with the medium of clay.

Tozan Miyanaga Ⅲ