Kiyoshi Awazu, The Metabolism Film Poster, 1975

“The creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters” - borrowing the language defining a psychedelic experience, this is how one article aptly described the work of Japanese graphic designer Kiyoshi Awazu (1929 - 2009).

Awazu was a self-taught painter and graphic designer whose long and successful career started in the years following World War II. A legendary figure in Japanese graphic design history, he is known for his genre-bending artwork.

Kiyoshi Awazur, World Design Expo 1989 Poster

At a time of rapid industrialisation, Awazu wanted to temper modernism with traditional art forms and folklore values, perhaps as a way of remaining rooted, of guarding against the creation of a soulless metropolis.

In his own words, the designer's mission was “to extend the rural into the city, foreground the folklore, reawaken the past, summon back the outdated.”

Kiyoshi Awazu, poster for The Movement To Support One Meal, 1979, (c) 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

The poster above was designed for Risshō Kōsei Kai, a Japanese Buddhist organization involved in peace and humanitarian activities, including the "Movement to Support One Meal”, a charitable initiative encouraging people to skip one meal and donate the cost to support those in need.

Kiyoshi Awazu, poster for the film Seishū Hanaoka's Wife, 1970

This poster (above) was designed for the film Seishū Hanaoka's Wife, based on the wife and mother of Hanaoka Seishu, a surgeon at the end of the Edo period (second half of the 19th century), who succeeded in performing the world’s first breast-cancer operation with full anesthesia.

Kiyoshi Awazu, The Metabolism Film Poster, 1964

Awazu collaborated with film makers and architects, and was part of The Metabolism biomimetic architectural movement that took inspiration from nature to solve architectural design issues in a bid to fuse megastructures with organic biological growth.

(Fascinating movement - it proposed vast cities that floated on the oceans and plug-in capsule towers that supported organic growth. As you can guess, most of these ideas remain largely theoretical - for now…)

Kiyoshi Awazu, UCLA Asian Performing Arts Institute poster, 1981

Experimenting with traditional Japanese motifs, vivid colours and abstract figures, Awazu created immersive visual experiences and surrealist worlds into which he invited the viewer. Interpret them as you will.

The Creative Exuberance of the Liberated Mind