Tommaso Calabro participates to the next edition of Asia NOW with a monographic booth dedicated to the Japanese artist Tiger Tateishi (1941-1998), one of the most eclectic figures in the Milanese and international art scene of the second half of the last century.

Born as Koichi Tateishi in 1941 in Tagawa, a coal-mining town in the Fukuoka Prefecture, Tateishi moves to Milan in 1968. The presentation at Asia Now includes a selection of works on paper and paintings produced from 1969 to 1975, the artist’s most prolific years in terms of pictorial production. In Italy, the artist begins signing his works with the signature “Tiger Pinxit,” produces his first, rare lithographs, and develops his famous “cartoon” paintings. Between 1969 and 1981, before moving back to Japan, Tateishi produces circa one hundred of these paintings, kaleidoscopes of images and icons, where his greatest passions converge: surrealism, science fiction and comics. The selection focuses on iconic canvases by the artist: large and medium format canvases, where images follow one another as in a comic book, each image opening up a variety of possible meanings. The selection of drawings focuses on the imagery of the tiger, the Maoist animal symbolizing a rampant imagination, after which the artist renamed himself.

Tommaso Calabro’s presentation also includes rare archival materials as well as a selection of lithographs designed in the early Seventies in collaboration with Ettore Sottsass.