Mizu Tetsuo's "Flag" series, a representative work by Mizutetsuo, active in Japan and abroad

This is a lithograph of the "Flag" series, a representative work by Tetsuo Mizushima, who was in the limelight in Europe from the 1980s to the 1990s and continues to be active in Japan and abroad.

Born in Tokyo in 1944, Mizutetsuo was so impressed by Modigliani's paintings that he looked up to him as a lifelong teacher. 1971, he began studying painting at Musashino Art School, where he began working in earnest, and in the 1980s he began producing his "Flag" series, which brought him into the limelight. This series of paintings uses the "International Signal Flag," which is used for communication between maritime vessels.

The International Flag was established in the mid-19th century as a method of communication, including writing, with each flag corresponding to a letter or number of the alphabet.
The "Flag" series is based on this mechanism, replacing the alphabet in the title with flags and constructing screens with a unique worldview to create a variety of abstract works.
Despite the systematic structure that graphically transforms symbols, the distorted organic lines and brushstrokes of the matiere leave a somewhat deep and lyrical expression in the works, which have been highly acclaimed not only in Japan but also in the art scene in Europe and the United States.