Kazuko Inoue

Kazuko Inoue is known for her energetic paintings that feature bright colors and repetitive forms within square canvases. Her bold, geographic compositions, often organized in grids, fuse the formalism of Kasimir Malevich with the joyful hues and patterns of Henri Matisse. Inoue developed her lyrical style in the United States, where she moved in the 1960s; she received her BFA and MFA from Michigan State University. For over four decades, she has approached the confines of the square as a space to experiment with color, initially breaking it up into diagonals and triangles and later expanding her shapes to include a wider array of color blocks. Rendered with loose brushwork and an impasto technique, her work has a sculptural quality. Inoue’s paintings are in the collections of such museums as the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut and the Newark Museum in New Jersey.