Keiichi Tanaami, Ebullient Japanese Pop Artist, Dies at 88

Keiichi Tanaami 1936-2024, Japan Follow +

Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami passed away on 9 August, just two days after the retrospective Keiichi Tanaami: Adventures in Memory opened at The National Art Center in Tokyo on 7 August.

The news was announced in an email signed by NANZUKA gallery’s Chief Director Shinji Nanzuka.

Nanzuka said that Tanaami was diagnosed with a blood disorder in late June, and suffered a haemorrhage in the space surrounding his brain at the end of July.

Born in Tokyo in 1936, Tanaami was nine years old when bombs fell on the city towards the end of World War II. American fighter jets and skeletons are a recurring theme in his work, which favours bright colours and a clean, graphic style.

After graduating in graphic design from the Musashino Art University in 1960, Tanaami worked as an illustrator while participating in art happenings by Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Neo-Dadaist Ushio Shinohara.

He took inspiration from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein‘s appropriation of commercial media. This year he collaborated with Mattel on a glorious, monster-outfit Barbie doll.

In 1975, Tanaami became the first art director of the Japanese edition of Playboy Magazine, and from 1991, he worked as a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design.

He continued to make his own art, and in 2017, showed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in a collaboration with Oliver Payne.

‘During his lifetime, Tanaami had described his recent animations and painting works as “the world in which [he] will live in after death”,’ Nanzuka said.

‘I am sure that Tanaami’s soul will continue to live forever in this paradise that he himself has built, enjoying his time with his wife, friends, and all the strange yet marvellous creatures and monsters that inhabit it.’ —[O]

Main image: Keiichi Tanaami at Paraventi: Keiichi Tanaami, Prada Aoyama, Tokyo, 2023. © Keiichi Tanaami. Courtesy NANZUKA.