LONDON.- Untitled (Red Fan) is the first sculpture by the Gutai group founding member Kazuo Shiraga to arrive at auction. Estimated at £1,500,000-2,000,000, the enormous work leads an impressive selection of Japanese masterpieces in Bonhams’ 11 February Post-War and Contemporary Art sale at Bonhams New Bond Street.

Shiraga (1924-2008) was one of the great pioneers of post-war art. Famed for painting with his feet while suspended by a rope, he considered physical actions as fundamentally linked to spiritual experiences. All of his work embodies a powerful presence, but he produced only a very small selection of sculptures. Untitled (Red Fan), which is more than three metres wide, is one of his most monumental. It has been in a private collection for more than 50 years, but has been exhibited around the world, from the International Gallery Orez in The Hague in 1966, to the Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano in 2010 and the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York in 2012.

Shiraga’s Fan series was remarkable because it integrated a traditional Japanese symbol with the cultural avant garde. Made in 1965, Untitled (Red Fan) is an early example of the interest in esoteric Buddhism that would later come to define much of Shiraga’s artistic output. The fan can be connected to the Buddhist Wheel of Law and was traditionally believed to have the power to restore the soul - the central point symbolises birth, while each blade represents a possible path in life. Shiraga’s combination of these ideas with the principles of the Gutai group can be seen later in the arc-like fan shapes that he made in his foot paintings by using wooden boards, but the synthesis in a three-dimensional work is unique to the Fan series.

The Gutai group, which means ‘concrete’, was founded in 1954 and sought to redefine art as a medium that could relate to post-war Japan. During World War II, artistic talent was allowed to produce nothing that was not in the service of the national war machine - the Gutai movement was a defiant reinstatement of artistic individuality and presence.

“The scale of the Gutai group’s immense influence on the global sphere of contemporary art is only now becoming apparent and the momentum of Western recognition for this ground-breaking movement is increasing,” said Ralph Taylor, Bonhams Senior Director of Post-War and Contemporary Art. “After the Guggenheim’s seminal Gutai group show in 2013, it feels a particularly appropriate time to introduce a Shiraga sculpture to auction, especially as Untitled (Red Fan) has such an incredibly powerful aesthetic impact.”

The first generation of Gutai artists experimented with performance art many years before the popular concept developed in the West. Among the key pioneers was Shozo Shimamoto (1928-2013), who in the 1950s invited spectators to traverse walkways consisting of firm and wobbly planks - one of the first instances of performance in the grand narrative of art history. Magi 903, a later work by the Gutai co-founder and the product of his internationally renowned Crash Bottle performance series, will feature in the 11 February sale with an estimate of £60,000-80,000.

Magi 903 is one work from a sequence Shimamoto created at the Museo Magi ‘900 in Bologna in 2008. In front of an enormous audience, Shimamoto laid canvases in a polythene-lined arena in the centre of the museum and, for fifteen intensely physical minutes, the 80-year-old smashed glass bottles of acrylic paint onto the floor in time with Mozart’s Magic Flute. Magi 903 is a dynamic burst of colour and glass – a stunning blend of paint, sculpture and energy.

Further Japanese works in the sale include a powerfully evocative watercolour, ink and crayon drawing on paper by Yayoi Kusama, a key inspiration to Pop Art master Andy Warhol. Estimated at £25,000-35,000, the work was created in 1952 – at the very beginning of Kusama’s career as one of the most important living Japanese artists.

The selection of six works by Japanese artists represents just one facet of the 11 February sale’s distinctly international outlook. Shiraga’s Untitled (Red Fan) leads the carefully curated selection of 49 lots alongside masterpieces by Andy Warhol, Frank Auerbach and El Anatsui.