Kazuo Nakamura. Inner Structure, 1956. oil on hardboard, Overall: 60.8 x 78.8 cm (23 15/16 x 31 in.) Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Mr. Charles McFaddin, Toronto, 1985. © Art Gallery of Ontario 85/115
Located on Level 2 in Gallery 225 (Bovey Gallery).
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Kazuo Nakamura (1926-2002) is celebrated for his abstract paintings that engage with the geometric forms and universal laws of nature. Distinguished by their introspective and precise qualities, Nakamura’s paintings consist of scattered light and fragmented shapes that evoke a range of natural phenomena—from the structure of subatomic particles to the vastness of a forest. “There’s a sort of fundamental pattern in all art and nature. In a sense, scientists and artists are doing the same thing. The world of pattern is a world we are discovering together,” the artist once said.
Blue Dimension is a focused exhibition of 15 paintings from the AGO Collection ranging from the 1950s to 1980s. It marks twenty years since Kazuo Nakamura: The Human Measure, a major retrospective hosted by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2004.
Born in Vancouver to Japanese parents, Nakamura and his family were detained in internment camps in 1942 under Canada’s War Measures Act during the Second World War. They resettled in Hamilton, Ontario in 1945. Two years later he moved to Toronto, where he would spend the rest of this life. Throughout his four-decades-long career, he explored many different styles and techniques, transitioning between figuration and abstraction. Nakamura was a member of Painters Eleven, a group of Canadian artists associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. He achieved critical success unprecedented for any Japanese Canadian artist at the time, and has since inspired generations of artists.
