On Kawara (Kariya, 1932 – New York, 2014) was a Japanese conceptual artist. Beginning in 1951, he devoted himself, as a self-taught artist, to the study and making of art. During this early period, he primarily created drawings depicting fragmented nude figures and abstracted environments. In 1965, he settled in New York City, where he continued his artistic exploration, particularly focusing on themes related to space and time.
From the mid-1960s onward, the concept of time became central to Kawara’s work. This fascination began on January 4, 1966, with the start of his most significant and long-running series: Today or Date Paintings, a body of work that he continued for nearly five decades. These pieces consist of monochrome canvases—typically red, blue, or grey—on which the date of creation is carefully painted in white. Kawara always followed the date format and language conventions of the country where the painting was made. In places where the Roman alphabet was not standard, he sometimes used alternative systems, such as Esperanto.
The production of these works did not follow a strict schedule: there were days when Kawara painted nothing and others when he created more than one piece. However, each Date Painting was created with meticulous care, following a rigid, almost ritualistic process. If a painting was not completed by midnight of the given day, Kawara would destroy it. Each canvas was housed in a handmade cardboard box, often accompanied by a clipping from a local newspaper of that day.
Kawara’s choice of dates appears to lack any consistent symbolic pattern—some may coincide with personal or historical events, while others seem chosen arbitrarily. The unifying element is their chronological sequence. Each Today painting exists as an individual entity within the continuous flow of time, subtly challenging the way we perceive calendars and emphasizing that time is a human construct shaped by culture and experience.
In the 1970s, Kawara expanded his conceptual practice by incorporating simple, factual statements into works presented as telegrams or lists. This period saw the emergence of iconic series such as I Went, I Got Up (1968–1979), and One Million Years – Past (1970). In the 1980s, he introduced One Million Years – Future (1980–1998). Together, One Million Years – Past and Future consist of typed pages listing years that stretch a million years backward and forward in time. These works, while minimal and data-like, reflect on the finality of human life and attempt to alleviate existential anxiety by presenting time in a purely numerical, depersonalized form.
Over the course of the 29,771 days that Kawara lived, he was the subject of numerous important exhibitions, as documented by the One Million Years Foundation, which preserves his legacy. Key exhibitions include One Thousand Days, One Million Years (1993, Dia Center for the Arts, New York), Whole and Parts 1964–1995 (1997–1998, Lyon, Rivoli, Barcelona, Tokyo), and Horizontality/Verticality (2001, Museum Ludwig, Cologne).
His work was first shown at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s inaugural Nippon Exhibition in 1953, followed by exhibitions at the Takemiya Gallery and the Hibiya Gallery in 1954. Kawara’s first New York show took place in 1967 at the Dwan Gallery. His first solo exhibition dedicated to One Million Years toured in 1971 through Düsseldorf, Paris, and Milan.
Kawara’s work was included in three Documenta exhibitions (1972, 1982, and 2002), as well as in the Tokyo Biennale(1970), the Kyoto Biennale (1976), and the Venice Biennale (1976). In the following years, major solo exhibitions were organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977), the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1980), the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1991), the South London Gallery (2004), and the Dallas Museum of Art (2008).
