Akira Shimizu and Anti-Art movement

Akira Shimizu and Happening

His mail box sculptures were strongly related to his childhood memories. During World War II when he was 7, he experienced the bombing of Toyama city, his hometown located on the coast of the Sea of Japan. He remembered that after the city was bombed, in the devastated town, only the mail box existed. And he said that he could not forget the scene where the mail box was giving off smoke from its mouth.
Later, in 1965 he made lots of mail box sculptures out of this memories, also inspired by the photograph posted in a newspaper which reported the massive fire at Motomachi Port of Izu Oshima Island.
He originally intended to place them in public places, not at the galleries nor art museums, and he wanted to break them down while picking up the system of everydayness that mail boxes include.

Mail Box

1965

Mail Box

1965

Mail Box

1965

Mail Box

1965

Mail Box

1965

Mail Box

1965