From 7th November to 23rd December, 2026
For the fourth time, Galerie Le Minotaure is presenting an exhibition by Chuta Kimura, a Japanese painter associated with the Second School of Paris.
Chuta Kimura arrived in Paris in 1953 at the age of 36. In the wake of the Second World War, as borders became more porous once again, he—like many artists from across the globe—sought to try his luck in the “City of Light,” hoping to realize his own “dream of the West.” The Parisian art scene was already saturated, however, and facing competition from emerging artistic hubs that were often more open and welcoming; consequently, his early days were far from easy. Without financial resources, connections, or a patron—and lacking the necessary perseverance and strength of character—even the greatest talent risks going unnoticed. While Kimura had exhibited very little prior to 1953, and only within Japan (having been conscripted for military service in 1937 and 1945), his arrival in Paris brought him the “good fortune” of finding not only a patron—who enabled him to rent a studio—but also gallery owners and critics who soon became his friends and champions, despite the inherent uncertainty of such a commitment. This was all the more significant given that the prevailing artistic climate was defined by a rejection—or even an explicit denial—of the past. Swimming against the tide, Kimura positioned himself as a “successor to Monet,” aiming to “transform the legacy of the great French pictorial tradition” by bringing Impressionism—a movement then reviled by the avant-garde as the epitome of stifling academicism—to its ultimate fulfillment. This is the case not only in Europe and the United States, but also in Japan, where in 1956—the year of Kimura’s first exhibition in France—the *Gutai Art Manifesto* was published. It characterizes the art of the past as “a deception,” a “heap of simulacra,” and “deceptive phantoms that have taken on the appearance of other matter: the magic of materials—pigments, canvas, metals, earth, or marble…”