| Minoru Yoshida | |
| Birth Date: | 1935[1] |
| Birth Place: | Osaka |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
| Alma Mater: | Kyoto City University of Fine Arts |
| Known For: | Painting, Sculpture, & Performance Art |
| Movement: | Gutai Art Association |
Minoru Yoshida (1935–2010) was a Japanese painter, sculptor, and performance artist, associated with the Gutai Art Association.
Yoshida attended a high school which specialized in science before studying painting at Kyoto City University of Fine Arts.
He briefly ran a kimono-dyeing shop before beginning his professional career as an artist.[2]
Yoshida is a second-generation Gutai artist, noted in the 1960s for his hard edge abstract paintings and futuristic sculptures before shifting the focus of his work to the performance format in the 1970s.[3] In 1965 he joined the Gutai movement.[2] Yoshida began incorporating performance art into his practice while living in New York City.[3] His performances often incorporated a "synthesizer jacket," a garment the artist created from plexiglass and adorned with circuits and resembling his earlier sculptures.[4] The artist also wired speakers into panels that were worn around the wearer’s thighs. By operating the different switches on the jacket, sculptural garment emitted a series of different rhythmic electronic sounds.[5] Yoshida lived in New York City from 1970 to 1978 before returning to Japan where he continued to work and perform until his death in 2010.[2]
He was included in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st Gutai Art Exhibitions at the Gutai Pinacotheca.[1] His piece Bisexual Flower was included in the Osaka World Expo 1970.[3] In 2013, Yoshida was included in Gutai: Splendid Playground exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.[6]
Yoshida's works can be found in the collections of Ashiya City Museum of Art and History, Hyogo, Japan; Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan; Takamatsu Municipal Museum, Kagawa, Japan; Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Niigata, Japan; and National Museum of Modern Art,[7] Kyoto, Japan.[8] [9]