Yoshitomo Nara - Hatje Cantz

A light blue hardcover journal is shown vertically on a white background. Its cover features an illustration of a child with a grumpy expression wearing a brown cat costume and holding a small white toy duck.

An angled view of a light blue hardcover book titled Yoshitomo Nara, set against a white background. The cover features one of the artist's iconic paintings of a sullen-looking young girl with short brown hair, wearing a red dress.

An overhead view of an open book with a pale blue cover, lying flat against a white background. The two-page spread displays a stylized painting of a child's head with reddish-orange hair and choppy bangs. The child has a pale, oversized face and glares intensely with large, wide-set, greenish-yellow eyes. The background is a textured, patchwork of muted yellow and beige tones.

An open book, photographed from above against a white background, displaying two pages of black-and-white pencil sketches. On the left page, a cartoon character with a bowl haircut and sunglasses plays an electric guitar, surrounded by the words ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR. On the right page, a similar character energetically sings into a microphone with the words HEY! HO! LET'S GO!.

A spread from an art book, with a table of contents in German on the left and a drawing on the right. The table of contents lists a chapter on artist Yoshitomo Nara. The drawing, in Nara's distinctive style, depicts a cartoonish head with a large brown boot stepping on it.

An open page from an art catalog. On the left is a painting by Yoshitomo Nara of a girl with orange bobbed hair and closed eyes, wearing a yellow top against a dark background. On the right is a page with two columns of German text titled Vorwort.

A book spread displaying two contrasting artworks. On the left, a child-like colored pencil drawing on brown paper from 1984 shows a girl on a stick horse among other doodles. On the right, an expressionistic painting on wood from 1987-1997 is split into two panels: a dark one with two white horse heads, and a light one with a haloed figure, with the words UNTER HIMMEL painted below.

A page from an art book showing the artwork Ships in Girl, 1992. The painting on the right is a stylized close-up of a girl's head on light brown paper. She has a dark bob haircut, large, intense green eyes, and a sullen expression. Three small, simple blue and white ships are depicted floating in her hair.

A two-page spread from an art book featuring two paintings by Yoshitomo Nara. On the left, Walk On I, 1998, shows a child in a green plant-like hat walking past a dark, stacked form. On the right, Untitled, 1994, is a close-up of a leg in a striped sock and a long, pointed black shoe with a pink flower growing from under its toe.

An art book spread with two paintings by Yoshitomo Nara from 1995. On the left, Mártir, a close-up portrait of a child with a large head and a defiant expression, wearing a red beret on a light blue background. On the right, The Longest Night, a child in a red hooded suit walks on stilts against a purple background, holding a fishing rod with a glowing yellow lantern hanging from it.

A side-by-side display of two circular artworks by Yoshitomo Nara from 2001. On the left, a cartoon girl in a yellow dress smokes a cigarette against a blue background. On the right, a girl in a blue dress stands with her arms crossed against a white background. Both characters have large heads and defiant, sullen expressions.

A close-up colored pencil drawing of a stylized child's face with dark, straight hair against a pale background. The child has a sullen expression with a thin, downturned mouth and large, almond-shaped eyes of different colors: one is yellow and blue, and the other is green.

A painting in the style of Yoshitomo Nara showing a girl with a large head and wide, vacant eyes peering over a green hill. In the background, a small white house is engulfed in flames, with a large plume of smoke billowing into the pale blue sky.

A two-page book spread displays two similar, off-white ceramic sculptures against a plain background. On the left is a child-like head with closed eyes and a tall, pointed conical hat, captioned Little Thinker in Silence, 2016. On the right, a similar head features a more rounded hat with a bud-like shape on top, captioned Little Thinker in the Garden, 2016. Both sculptures have serene expressions.

A two-page spread from an art book showing two portraits by Yoshitomo Nara. On the left, Miss Margaret, 2016, depicts a girl with large, round, multicolored eyes and a white scalloped collar against a pale green background. On the right, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 2017, shows a similar girl with narrower, more intense eyes and a stern expression against a bright chartreuse background.

Two anti-war paintings by artist Yoshitomo Nara, displayed side-by-side. The left painting, Stop the Bombs, shows an angry girl with pigtails and crossed arms beneath a sign reading STOP THE BOMBS. The right painting, No War, shows a sad, crying girl with a bruised eye wearing a t-shirt that says NO WAR.

A painting of a young girl with a brown bob haircut and an angry expression, wearing a red dress with a white collar against a plain background.

Yoshitomo Nara

€ 44.00

VAT included. Shipping costs will be calculated at checkout

Edited by: Daniel Zamani

Texts by: Lucía Agirre, Shigemi Takahashi, Mika Yoshitake

German

December 2024, 224 Pages, 260 colored photos

hardcover

215mm x 247mm

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5929-8

HATJE CANTZ VERLAG
Mommsenstr. 27
10629 Berlin
Germany
E-Mail: contact@hatjecantz.de

According to Article 9(7) of the GPSR Regulation, no additional security information is required for books without supplements or special functions.

Press download

The enchanting world of the Japanese artist

The Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (*1959) is one of the best-known artists of his generation. He achieved international fame with his so-called "Angry Girls": his highly stylized depictions of girls, whose large heads and captivating eyes often appear threatening, defiant and angry, or melancholy and insecure, have become his trademark - and are now considered icons of contemporary painting. The "Yoshitomo Nara" catalog shows his works from four decades.

Even if Nara's characters evoke the aesthetics of manga, his figures, animals, and hybrid creatures are above all a reflection of himself, through which he expresses his feelings and thoughts. His deep-rooted memories of his childhood, which was characterized by loneliness due to his working parents, his love of music and literature, his knowledge of Japanese and European art history as well as his encounters with people and other cultures serve as sources of inspiration.

Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in a suburb of Hirosaki in northern Japan. After studying painting at the University of the Arts in Aichi, he moved to the renowned art academy in Düsseldorf in the late 1980s. He stayed in Germany for twelve years, where he continued to develop his unique visual language. In 2000, Nara returned to Japan, where he still lives and works today.

EXHIBITION

Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

November 23, 2024-April 27, 2025