Ideal Women's Home Companion Feels Like Human Flesh.' Screenprint. 1971. Signed, numbered and dated in pen. Edition of 25. 11 3/4 x 11 5/8" ; together with, 'Woman Masturbating.' Screenprint. 1971. Signed, numbered and dated in pen. Edition of 25; together with, 'Marilyn Monroe.' Screenprint. Signed and numbered in pencil. Edition of 80. 30 1/2 x 21 1/2" ; together with, 'Erotic Scene of Women.' Screenprint. 1971. Signed, numbered and dated in pencil. Edition of 20. 31 x 42 1/2". All exceptionally rare artworks, with few known surviving examples. Some with condition issues, please inquire.

An aspiring cartoonist since childhood, Keiichi Tanaami entered Musashino Art University in Tokyo to train in graphic design. Upon graduation, he had already secured a position in an advertising agency. He soon quit to better dedicate himself to the lucrative private commissions he had been receiving throughout his student years. Over the course of the 1960s, Tanaami established himself as one of the pioneering practitioners of pop art in postwar Japan.

Tanaami’s idiosyncratic brand of pop art draws upon his exposure to Japanese manga in his youth coupled with Western superhero comics left by American soldiers during the postwar occupation of his home country. His mature style incorporated psychedelic culture resulting in the kaleidoscopic and hallucinogenic compositions brimming with psychosexual undertones that make his work so recognizable today.

The early 1970s marked an erotic turn in Taanami’s graphic practice when he began culling images from underground pornographic tabloids, vintage pin-ups, portraits of Hollywood actresses and sex toy advertisements. Part satire and part executed in the spirit of free love, the selection of silkscreens here play upon the hypersexualised marketing of commercial products and media personalities in the United States. It may come as no surprise that the Japanese edition of Playboy named Taanami its inaugural art director when first put to print in 1975.

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