Izumi Kato valuation
Japanese painter and sculptor of primal, embryo-like figures, deliberately left untitled.
Izumi Kato was born in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, in 1969 and graduated from the oil painting department of Musashino Art University in 1992.
What a work by Izumi Kato is worth
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Bio
Izumi Kato was born in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, in 1969 and graduated from the oil painting department of Musashino Art University in 1992. His paintings were first shown in group exhibitions in Tokyo in 1995, and around 2004 he began to make sculpture as well, carving figures in wood that he then paints. His figures, in paint and in sculpture, are strange, primal beings that often resemble embryos or foetuses, and his works are deliberately left untitled so that viewers meet them without a story. He names Francis Bacon, Van Gogh and the eighteenth-century painter Itō Jakuchū among his influences. In 2007 the curator Robert Storr invited him to the 52nd Venice Biennale, where he was the first young Japanese artist chosen.
Paintings, painted wood sculptures and works on paper all appear, along with prints and editions. Painted wood can crack and lose paint as humidity changes, so condition should be checked closely, and a gallery invoice or certificate and the date of the work should go with it.
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