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.