Born in 1937 in Osaka, Japan, Takesada Matsutani was one of the most representative artists of post-war contemporary Japanese art, who focuses on painting, sculpture and print. In his early years, he studied traditional Japanese painting. In 1963, he became a member of the second-generation group of avant-garde Gutai artists. While the Gutai first determined to “use tools and the body” instead of traditional paint brushes, in 1962, the addition of new young artists sparked the innovative energy of the Second Gutai period and experimented with new materials. In 1966, Matsutani left for Paris for study then settled in the same city where he developed a more radical way of creating. He covered his canvas with white glue, and dried the liquid glue by electronic fan to settle a surface that produced curious textures of swells, fissures and puckers. He then painted on the white-glue surface with graphite. Matsutani’s work breaks the limit of two-dimensional painting and could be seen as both painting and sculpture. The artist currently lives and works between Paris, and Nishinomiya, Japan. His works are included in collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Albertina Museum in Vienna.