Overview

TAROMAN theatrical Osaka, Japan was the the site of Expo ’70, and among the most memorable elements of the event, standing to this day, is the Tower of the Sun, a 70-metre-tall sculpture/building envisioned and designed by renowned artist Taro Okamoto, who some call “the Japanese Picasso”. Having passed away in 1996, Okamoto is still celebrated as a leading light in modern Japanese art, a challenger of conventions driven to liberate creative expression for one and all. Drawing on Pop Art and surrealism, and the Space Age and Stone Age in equal measure, Okamoto left a legacy of strikingly imaginative works, and pronouncements on art that weren’t stuffy abstractions, but populist battle cries.