Shinkichi Tajiri

Shinkichi Tajiri (b.1923 Los Angeles, USA – d. 2009 Baarlo, NL) was a child of first-generation immigrants to the USA from Japan, and grew up in the US. Following the Japanese attack in Hawaii the Tajiri family were detained in a US internment camp and lost their family home. More to escape the camp than out of Patriotism, Tajiri enlisted in the highly decorated all-Japanese American regiment of the American Army. After attending the Chicago Art Institute from 1946 to 1948 and working for the sculptor Isamu Noguchi in New York, he moved to Paris in 1949 and joined the CoBrA group showing at the 1949 CoBrA exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In Paris he studied with Ossip Zadkine and Fernand Léger becoming a significant figure in the group of dispossessed Post-War artists, who, after the physical and moral devastation dreamed of a universal art that would transcend borders and nations.