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.
