Ushio Shinohara

(Japanese, born 1932)

Ushio Shinohara is a Japanese artist best known for his signature “boxing paintings,” in which he dips boxing gloves in sumi-e ink or paint and then punches at paper or canvas. He is aligned with Neo-Dada artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, both in his use of ordinary and found materials and in his performative attitude towards formal decisions. Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, were the subjects of the critically acclaimed 2013 documentary Cutie and the Boxer, which brought a heightened level of attention and popularity to his work. Born in 1932 in Tokyo, Japan, he went on to study painting at the Tokyo Art University. Today, Shinohara’s works can be found in the collections of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.