Keiichi Tanaami

Keiichi Tanaami is a Japanese artist and designer. His work is best known for its combination of multiple color schemes and styles in painting, film, and print mediums

History

Tanaami was born in 1936 to a fabric wholesaler in Kyobashi, Tokkyo. He attended the Musashino Art University and the school of design before taking at Hakuhodo’s production center. He quickly left the company only a year later though due to increased outside work and started working in animations, illustration, editorial, lithograph and numerous other avant-garde styles.

In 1968, he moved to New York City and started painting with Andy Warhol in the pop artist’s Fctory. He then moved to San Francisco where he spent some time experimenting with drugs and expanding the kinds of work he did.

In 1975, he was named the art director of the Monthly Playboy Japanese Edition and later received a special prize at the Nissenbi for design. He did not stop his own experimental works though, continuting to present motion pictures and showing films throughout the world at numerous film festivals.

In 1981, Tanaami was hospitalized with Pleurisy where he spent a great deal of time developing his next series of art work by representing memory in film, paintings, and lithograph. He entered the world academia in 1991 when he took a job in Kyoto University as a professor of Art and Design.

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