Shôzô Shimamoto

Shozo Shimamoto was a Japanese artist. He was a co-founder of the avant garde Gutai group formed in the 1950s, and his works are in museum collections such as those of the Tate Gallery and the Tate Modern and the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith has noted him as one of the most daring and independent experimentalists of the postwar international art scene in the 1950s. Internationally today he is especially noted for his work in the "mail art" genre, of which he was a pioneer. In 1997 his mail art works were shown in the solo exhibition "Shozo Shimamoto's Gutai & A.U." in the 'E-mail Art Archives' of Guy Bleus, Center for Visual Arts, Hasselt, Belgium.