Kazuya sakai biography
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Art Worlds
Kazuya Sakai in Texas
Lillian Michel
How did an Argentine artist, critic, translator, jazz expert, radio host, graphic designer, professor, and pionjär of geometric abstraction in Mexico come to retire in Richardson, Texas?
Such a singular person was Kazuya Sakai (Figure 1). For the final 24 years of his prolific career, he lived in Texas. He was a professor at three schools in the UT System, including for sixteen years at UT Dallas. And yet, he is an underrecognized figure in the state today. To be sure, traces of his work remain. For example, a painting by him in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin has been prominently displayed there for years, although the online object label acknowledges his marginal status.[1] “Kazuya Sakai’s internationalism (he was born in Argentina of Japanese parents and lived in Argentina, Japan, Mexico, and the United States) has ironically obscured his contribution to Latin
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Kazuya Sakai Archive
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Scope and Contents
The Kazuya Sakai Archive is dated contains correspondence and personal papper, photographic material, teaching materials, financial documents, exhibition catalogues, and various publications.
The archive documents Sakai's multi-faceted career as an artist, radio host, professor, critic, kunnig in jazz and classical music and literature. Consists of 31 linear feet that contains his syllabi on various courses that he taught at El Colegio de Mexico, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), University of Iowa, University of Texas.
The bulk of the archive that is fully described are Series II and III. The remainder of the collection will continue to be described.
Series II, there is a special note of Sakai's radio shows transcripts. These documents are dated from and covers a range of programming dedicated to classical music; jazz and its various sub-genres such as j
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He is educated in Japan, where he studies literature and philosophy at the Waseda University, in Tokyo. In he returns to Argentina and having started painting on his own, he holds his first individual exhibit at the La Cueva Gallery in In he takes part in the Siete pintores abstractos (Seven abstract painters) exhibition. In he holds an individual exhibition for the last time in Buenos Aires.
A year later he moves to New York, where remains until He then moves to Mexico where he resides for a long time, until he returns back to the US in During that period he held a lot of exhibitions in Mexico, US, Spain and Costa Rica. He gradually abandons gestural painting in Mexico to lean towards abstract geometric forms, of brilliant chromates, syncopated rhythms and tilted traces in Fugue. He joins Octavio Paz’ team and is one of the founders of Plural Magazine, where he becomes chief of staff and artistic director (). He is a Japanese translator and university professor. Apart from