Sadamasa Motonaga is an abstract painter best known for his involvement in the Gutai Group. Motonaga graduated from trade school; with aspirations to be a manga artist, he began to make figural and landscape works on canvas under the tutelage of painter Mankichi Hamabe. In 1952, he began to make abstract objects and paintings, which garnered him an invitation to join the Gutai exhibitions. One of his most famous works was a site-specific installation with pools of colored water suspended in vinyl tubes hanging from trees. From then, he experimented with water and smoke as ephemeral artistic materials. Inspired in part by tarashikomi techniques in traditional Japanese painting, he began to make paintings generated by chance, tilting canvases and pooling paint.