Tokyo, Japan: Kobundo, 1959. 18,9x13,3 cm. Hardcover. 208 pp. Japanese.

Monograph. Original dust-jacket, cover and frontispiece designed by On Kawara. Jun Ebara’s book on post war art, compiling also previously published texts. Contains “Centripetal Art: On Kawara’s Pictures” which was first published in 1956 in Bijutsu Hihyo and is one of the very first essays regarding Kawara’s work. Here this text along with two full page illustrations make for what is - most probably - the first appearance [?] of On Kawara’s work in a book. Given the publication year of Watashi no DADA, Ebara’s Kawara essay reads prophetically in retrospect - unintentionally bordering with irony - that [...] his painting is unthinkable without an enclosed space. [...] concluding [...] The series will be complete when the direction is exhausted and Kawara will be free to start looking for new means of expression.
1959 was the year that Kawara donated all his work up to that point to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and left Japan, for good, to join his father in Mexico before moving on to travel the world and settle in New York. A major turning point in his career after which Kawara reinvented himself. Extremely scarce publication. Some blemishing on dust-jacket. Else, Near Fine. Book clean and tight.