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135
Shiryū Morita, KI (JU), 1989

Chapter: Seelenfenster - Gesture, Movement, Cipher

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Movements of the experiencing soul
Morita Shiryū expressed something both poetic and analytical about modern Japanese calligraphy: “Calligraphic works are traces left behind by the movements of the experiencing soul.” He said this as a member of Bokujinkai, the avant-garde “Society of Ink People,” which he founded in the early 1950s with Yūichi Inoue and other artists to establish calligraphy as a universal, modern art form equal in status to Western abstract painting.

Radical renewal
In the postwar period, under the shadow of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a desire for radical renewal. For the Bokujinkai, the brush was no longer merely a writing tool but an extension of the arm, used with the whole body, often on paper placed on the floor. To cover entire rooms or enormous sheets of paper, the artists commissioned brushes made from palm fibers or wild boar bristles instead of the usual goat-hair brushes. They worked with brushes so heavy they required both hands or even used straw or brushwood brooms.

The deep meaning of a character
Around 1960, Morita developed his own style: dynamically painted characters that burst in broad brushstrokes and culminate in splashes of color. He experimented with new materials, including aluminum paste applied over multiple layers of black paper. The surface was then coated with natural lacquer, whose yellowish sheen gave the letters a golden hue. For Morita, as in Ki (Tree) (1989), the content and deeper meaning of a character served as the starting point for transcending the boundaries between writing and image.

Writing transformed into image
Through the use of the body, the artist himself becomes a sign. This is evident in the rhythm of his writing, which can be felt on the page. The life of the artist and the written character virtually merge to create what can be recognized and experienced as the art of writing. This is the “movement of the soul” that Morita describes. Even if the modern calligraphies of Morita or Yūichi Inoue may evoke Action Painting, Abstract Expressionism, or Art Informel, they are not painting in the conventional sense but writing transformed into image.


Audio

Note: The audio transcription is voiced by an AI.

Shiryū Morita, KI (JU), 1989
Tree
Aluminium paste on layers of black paper, coated with transparent lacquer
© Morita Estate
Written Art Collection

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