EDWARD ZUTRAU: PAINTER OF SATORI
At his most expressive and expansive, Edward Zutrau (1922-1993) achieved in post- World War II abstract painting an innovative synthesis of East-meets-West ideas that surpassed in understanding and insight what many of his peers were attempting to articulate in their own explorations of the sublime. As the intriguingly novel philosophies of Zen Buddhism were gaining currency among forward-thinking artists in New York in the 1950s, Zutrau, embedded within that creative milieu, was certainly not immune to their appeal. His artistry distinguished itself from his contemporaries, however, as he then went on to live in Japan, in two long stretches between 1958 and 1967. To Zutrau, the guiding philosophies of Zen that had been primarily intellectual made a dramatic creative leap once they become experiential, both through the development of his own meditative practices and his firsthand immersion within Japanese culture.
Richly resonant with shifting colors in a dimensionless space, his unique abstractions held a self-evident quality of revelation that glimpsed the kind of Zen awakening other similarly inspired artists struggled to achieve. By successfully dissolving the mediating elements of intellectualization, or even the physicality of oil paint and canvas, Zutrau’s artwork creates an immediacy of experience that he asserted could be “fully comprehended with our whole being.” The resulting paintings reflected both his philosophy and experience: basic pure colors, graceful irregular shapes, simple facture, and wistful brushwork that is natural and not enhanced. These works successfully integrate Japanese influences with New York School principles to achieve a stunning originality that bursts forth in its restraint.
The dispersion of the basic precepts of Zen Buddhism in the US can be traced to the extraordinary influence of its chief interlocutor D.T. Suzuki, a Japanese professor of Buddhist philosophies who lectured at Columbia University in New York from 1952 to 1957. Through his influential teachings, Suzuki made the complexity of Zen accessible to a Western audience wholly unfamiliar with these perspectives. Zen is difficult to grasp, he argued, because it is not a clearly defined religion accompanied by rituals and clergy. Rather, the potential for enlightenment exists within all of us. Satori, or awakening, is at once personal and universal, where multitudes are contained in one, and one contains multitudes, and eternity co-exists with the present moment.
Suzuki gained enormous popularity among New York School artists including Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell, musical composer John Cage, and legendary gallerist Betty Parsons, who would later give Zutrau solo shows in her esteemed gallery. Suzuki himself praised Zen painting, as it was the record of an instant, involved an element of chance and a lack of control, and achieved profound expression with the greatest simplicity. Suzuki’s teachings threaded through the works of all of these artists, including Zutrau, who would explore Zen ideas in their own practices.
A Brooklyn native, Edward Zutrau trained with distinguished artists in figuration, including Will Barnet at the Art Students League and Michele Falanga at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art. But the thrilling ideas of abstraction circulating in New York, combined with the intriguing questions posed by Zen philosophy, proved Essay continues on page 6
1955
60 x 45 x 1 in
Untitled,
Oil on linen
EDWARD ZUTRAU: PAINTER OF SATORI
irresistible. It was the move to Japan in 1958, however, that notably shifted Zutrau’s artwork to more luscious yet softer color swathes with indefinite borders that floated boundlessly within the pictorial space. The delicious, almost fruity colors caught the attention of Japanese publications, which praised his “very clear and strong” paintings in “clear primary colors [that] expressed a variety of spaces.” Zutrau would have in total five solo exhibitions in Tokyo at some of its most respected galleries. The undeniable influence of his environs could best be stated by a 1963 review in Mainichi Daily News:
Zutrau’s art is “obviously American, of the New York School of abstraction, a kindred of Rothko, Still, and Newman’s, but its combinations and emphases add up to a new freshly realized original work. This is enhanced by means of certain conscious or perhaps unconscious addition of quite subtle qualities of space and color probably achieved through knowing about the arts of our tradition.”
Without doubt, the reviewers accurately observed that Zutrau’s understanding of Japanese aesthetic principles contributed greatly to the genius of his work. His use of colors generates an emotional atmosphere that critics identified as “extremely simple and direct” while also creating “a vision of absolute quiet.” For all their happy harmonies, Zutrau restricted his palette to just a few colors for each painting, often no more than three and sometimes variations of just one, to impart the utmost effect with confident clarity. It is this equanimity, the collapsing of any artificial polarizations, that charged Zutrau’s work with such startling originality. Through
reduction and restriction, he discovered magnification. The limited selection of just the essential elements creates, through the placement and color of forms, an extraordinary presence.
These color shapes, drifting in undefined liminality, would not have had their full impact without an acute awareness of the surrounding white space. Museum curator Jeffrey Wechsler notes that though comparable to Ellsworth Kelly, Zutrau creates color shapes that “do not…consistently reach to the border of the paintings. Instead, the areas allow empty space to meander around them.” Struck by the unexpected subtlety of Zutrau’s compositions, Wechsler finds that the surrounding blank fields recede from or move toward the painting’s periphery, creating a surprising sense of depth. Zutrau himself connects this aspect to his Zen practice, writing in 1980: “The clear white surface of a canvas to a painter…[is] the emptiness and centering (or focusing) we are told about when the people involved in meditation and Zen talk about clearing away all worldly distractions.” From this living, breathing whiteness, he extracts limitless dynamic potential. It is a center point from within an infinity where Zutrau, in the process of mark- making, finds his own living practice of Zen.
During the years Zutrau lived and exhibited his work in Japan, his paintings were in high demand and widely collected. After sojourns through Hawaii, Tahiti, and France, Zutrau eventually returned to New York, where his work was represented by Betty Parsons. As the prominent art critic Calvin Tomkins noted in The New Yorker, Parsons also oversaw the placement of Zutrau’s paintings in several important museum collections. It was Zutrau’s expression of Zen through abstract painting that created an aesthetically compelling experience of illogic and epiphany, urgency Essay continues on page 10
No. 3 (Blue Shape), 1965
Oil on linen 51.37 x 38.25 in
EDWARD ZUTRAU: PAINTER OF SATORI
and timelessness. “The truth is, Zen is extremely elusive as far as its outward aspects are concerned,” wrote Suzuki. “When you think you have caught a glimpse of it, it is no more there. From afar it looks so approachable, but as soon as you come near it, you see it even further away from you than before.” Through his highly personal artistry, Zutrau painted as if the dimensions that structure reality are existentially absent. It was his closest approximation to a personal enlightenment, every painting beginning the journey anew.
It is precisely by virtue of these subtle paradoxes within Zutrau’s art that his true genius might be seen to reside. In the purity of his colors there is great cleverness, in the simplicity of his compositions, there is infinite complexity, for these works invite endless moments of still contemplation and relaxed states of meditation. Indeed, in the experiencing of these paintings, perhaps there is even the opportunity for personal moments of satori.
- Bonnie B. Lee
Tokyo Image, 1959
Oil on linen
25.75 x 20.75 x1 in
Untitled, 1963 Oil on linen
51.25 x 63.75 in
Mandarin, 1957
Oil on linen
88 x 73.87 in
Mandarin, 1958
78.50 x 65.75x 1.25 in
Oil on linen
68.75 x 52 in
Untitled, 1956
Oil on linen
1971
89.50 x 71.50 x 1.25 in
Untitled,
Oil on linen
36 x 28.75 x 1 in
Untitled, 1969 Oil on linen
Untitled, 1963 Oil on linen
21 x 25.75 x 1 in
Untitled, 1962 Oil on linen
21 x 25.75 x 1 in
Untitled, 1962 Oil on linen
38.25 x 51.75 x 1.25 in
Tokyo Abstract, 1960
28.75 x 23.75 x 1 in
Oil on linen
72.50 x 54.50 x 1.25 in
Black Shape, 1959
Oil on linen
Tree Images, 1960
Water
Oil on linen
28.75 x 39.25 in
Untitled, 1963 Oil on linen
25.75 x 31.75 in
Spring Image (Jan 1960), 1960
Oil on linen
38.25 x 51 x 1 in
Abstraction (April), 1963
Oil on linen
21 x 25.75 in
Untitled, 1960
Oil on linen
19.75 x 25.75 x 1 in
Tokyo Image, 1959
x 39.50 x 1.25 in
Oil on linen
50.25
28.75 x 23.75 x 1 in
Untitled, 1963 Oil on linen
1960
25.75 x 21 x 0.75 in
Untitled,
Oil on linen
Tokyo, 1959
Oil on linen
51.25 x 63.75 in
Untitled, 1954
Oil on linen
36 x 50 in
