Shozo Shimamoto's Bottle Crash nets $331,000

Shozo Shimamoto's Bottle Crash (1991) sold for £269,000 ($331,139) in Christie's Asobi sale of Japanese and Korean post-war art.

The auction took place in London on October 11.

Shozo Shimamoto Christies
Shozo Shimamoto threw glass bottles filled with paint at canvases

Bottle Crash was created using the artist's idiosyncratic technique of launching glass bottles filled with paint at a rock placed in the centre of the canvas.

As the artist explained: "I think the throwing of bottles as a method of painting is a form of study of the unknown.

"More than anything else, I find stimulation in the materialisation of an unpredictable expression."

Shimamoto was a founding member of Japan's avant garde Gutai group (founded in 1954), who sought to combine performance and fine art.

It was a key influence on the experimental Fluxus movement in the west during the 1960s.

Vigorous (1991), a canvas by another key Gutai group member named Kazuo Shiraga, achieved £221,000 ($272,051).

Like Shimamoto, Shiraga had an approach to painting that could only be described as innovative.

He would swing from a rope suspended from the ceiling of his studio, scraping the paint with his feet along the way.

This piece dates from the early 90s, when he was living as a Buddhist monk.            

Another work by Shiraga is expected to make up to $3m in a sale at Phillips in November.

You can check out all our art and photography memorabilia for sale here.

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