(b Tokyo, 18 Dec 1937; d Kyoto, 15 Feb 1978). Japanese sculptor. After finishing junior high school, he entered a barbers’ school in Tokyo. As an artist he was self-taught. From 1957 until 1963 he exhibited at the Yomiuri Independent Exhibitions. His works from this period have a strong anti-art element and are composed of such things as lorry tyres or smashed beer and whisky bottles. During this time he was also active in the avant-garde group Neo-Dadaism Organizers, although he was not actually a member. In 1963 he held a one-man show at the Naika Art Gallery, Tokyo, in which he exhibited a sculpture of an ear made from aluminium alloy. After this he continued to use the human ear as his motif, creating a sculpture of a giant ear taller than a human being and a relief composed of a collection of dozens of small ears. In 1964 he received a prize at the sixth Gendai Nihon Bijutsu Ten (Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan). In 1967 he received a prize for Pink Ear 12 (polyester resin, h. 2.7 m, 1967; Tokyo, Dentsu Corp.) at the ninth Nihon Kokusai Bijutsu Ten (International Art Exhibition of Japan) at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. In the same year, he was also a prizewinner at the fifth Jeune Biennale de Paris. In 1968 his work was shown at the Venice Biennale. In 1979 his work Ear (aluminium alloy, h. 1.69 m, 1965; Tokyo, N. Mus. Mod. A.) was exhibited at a show entitled Gendai sekai bijutsu ten: Higashi to nishi no taiwa (‘Contemporary art from around the world: the dialogue between East and West’), sponsored by the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. In 1971 he lived in the USA for a year at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation. Around this time he tried to move away from creating sculptures of ears. In 1977 a one-man exhibition entitled Ringoen yori haru no kokoro (‘The heart of spring from an apple garden’) was shown at the Green Collections in Tokyo.

• Miki, Tomio
  • Japan, §VI, 5(v)(b): Avant-garde painting, after 1945
  • Neo-Dadaism Organizers