The Gutai group is an art association that emerged and thrived in Japan during the 1960s. It is considered to be the most influential post-war avant-garde art group. Upon breaking free of ruthless totalitarianism implemented during wartime, its artists yearned to acquire a new and unique cultural identity, and to gain equal status with their Western counterparts. At that time, Japanese society was divided as its people attempted to emulate European and American civilizations in their material aspects. The public reflected on their social context, seeking to restore and retain a spiritual purity that originated from native Japanese culture. Artists of the time also sought a universal abstract language, turning themselves into a vibrant source of experimentation. Shozo Shimamoto, co-founder of the Gutai group, coined the word “gutai,” aiming to “set paint completely free from the bounds of paintbrushes.” By combining “gu,” meaning “tools or means,” and “tai,” meaning “body,” Shozo Shimamoto intended for the name “gutai” to signify “performing with tools and human bodies.” Gutai artists forsook traditional art tools, particularly paintbrushes, and instead turned to a variety of audacious, unabashed ways of self-expression, especially in forms of bodily engagement. Marrying performance with painting, Shozo Shimamoto ignited the fiery vigor of paint and seamlessly blended explosive splatters of material and raging spirits of life with his destructive, dramatic creations. He made energy palpable using visual language. In the words of Jiro Yoshihara, leader of the Gutai group, “The shapes of explosions are captured by the paint.” The art critic Ayumi Ichiro once described the 1955 Gutai Art Exhibition as a showcasing of Martian-like creatures to express his astonishment at such an unprecedented display. Back then, each and every artist in the Gutai group performed art using unique experimental methods. They would paint with watering cans, remote-controlled toys, handmade cannons, or even their bare feet. They would even create transient happenings with mounds of mud, a little piece of sky, light bulbs, alarm clocks, giant helium balloons, or torn paper screens. All liberated paint by utilizing themselves as paintbrushes. As the Gutai group claimed, only by damaging works and discarding brushes could paint be freed and distance be formed. Pigments could radiate vitality only when emancipated from the confines of brushes. Gutai artists held exhibitions in parks, at bombed-out ruins, or under an urban sky. Starting with a few art festivals, they had continued to blur the boundaries between art, the public, and everyday life. They kept searching for new ways to directly engage their bodies in material, time, space, nature, and techniques. Shozo Shimamoto once said that, in effect, the seemingly paradoxical way of creation, in which paintings were “damaged,” would, more often than not, give birth to unconventional works... and that through persistent “damaging” experiments, a distinctive style might well be created, which he believed was the charm of new art and precisely where creativity came into play. During the 1950s and 1960s, Shozo Shimamoto explored the boundaries of painting by hurling bottles onto large-scale canvases, applying heavy paint, or puncturing holes in wove paper. His bottle crash works are characterized by sporadic color bursts and action painting features. Glass bottles filled with pigments were vigorously hurled against a boulder placed in the center of a canvas. As glass shattered into shards, the pigments created explosive splashes across the canvas, perfectly showcasing the thrilling speed of color. These works are truly dynamic and astounding. The work Untitled is one of Sakamoto Shozo's original bottle crashes created during the Gutai period. Magnificent and unrestrained, it is a rare large-scale artwork on the market in recent times. Sakamoto created his first bottle crash in 1956, causing an instant sensation, which is viewed as a pivotal contribution in the early Gutai period. After the Gutai disbanded in the 1970s, Sakamoto, aside from persistently performing bottle crashes around the world, intentionally advocated peace via classic art creation and performance, infusing indispensable momentum into postwar art as well as embodying the power to bring about revolution and innovation amidst destruction and achieve rebirth and liberation through complete devastation. The artist violently flung glass bottles filled with pigments against the canvas placed on diverse hard surfaces or boulders from different angles, allowing the bottles to explode and the various pigments inside to shoot and spray along with the glass shards, so as to create such a vibrant, dynamic image in the artwork. Glass and paint, focused on the rough surface, constitute a new gigantic cubic painting. Flaming splashes of red, yellow and orange, layer by layer, generate a brand-new texture. Like an explosive, dazzling torch, the impact of the artwork blazes joyfully and robustly.