Over the years the Center for Contemporary Graphic Art (CCGA) has introduced numerous works by Japan’s leading contemporary graphic designers. For this exhibition, we focus on works that can be said to form the core from which such contemporary Japanese works evolved: European works of modern design created in the 20th century. The works on exhibition have been gleaned from the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art Collection.
The Osaka City Museum of Modern Art Collection has long been prized as one of Japan’s most important collections of design in terms of both size and quality. Significantly, however, the collection became even more noteworthy with the addition in 2012 of the newly entrusted Suntory Poster Collection, which has further enhanced the museum’s holdings of graphic design works.
For this exhibition CCGA has borrowed cherished works from this outstanding collection broadly falling into two periods: the era of the 1920s and 1930s when modern design developed, and the period of the 1960s when modern design matured in the postwar era.
Visitors will have an opportunity to view the distinguishing traits of modern design in its various styles and geographic regions, from the prewar Russian avant-garde and Bauhaus, to the internationally famed Swiss and Dutch graphic design developments of postwar days.