The Universe Of Aquirax Uno: Between the Erotic, the Grotesque, And Design

The Beginning Of the Journey

Aquirax Uno (宇野亜喜良), born on March 13, 1934, in Nagoya, is one of post-war Japan's most unique and expressive visual artists. As a designer, illustrator, costume designer, and graphic artist, Aquirax Uno has built a multifaceted career that crosses the boundaries between art, design, literature, theater, and eroticism. His career, spanning over eight decades, accompanies profound historical, social, and cultural transformations in Japan, reflected in his work with imagistic intensity and unsettling lyricism. Analyzing the work of Aquirax Uno means delving into a rich and complex visual universe, where sensual beauty coexists with the unsettling, and the precision of design serves as a medium for expressing deep and, at times, transgressive themes.

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Aquirax Uno's artistic journey began early, influenced by his father, an interior decorator. While still in elementary school, he started learning to paint, and one of his oil works was selected in a competition. His childhood, however, was marked by World War II; in 1944, he was evacuated to the village of Asahi, living in a temple. The letters sent to his parents during this period already revealed his artistic inclination, filled with drawings. The end of the war brought him back to his family and the burnt fields of Nagoya, scenes that, according to him, his father took him to draw, along with the post-war ruins. This early experience with direct observation and the representation of reality, however devastated, may have sown the seeds for the expressiveness that would mark his future work.

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In elementary school, he began attending painting institutes, intensely dedicating himself to sketches (croquis). He describes this phase with a mixture of youthful pride and self-criticism: "With the ingenuity of a boy, I drew dozens of drawings a week for three years, so I was able to draw any part without looking at it." This technical proficiency, acquired through almost obsessive practice, became a fundamental tool. At the same time, he would later reflect on the potential loss of "ingenuity" and "pure passion," essential to illustration, that this speed and skill could entail. Around 1948, he began studying with Miyawaki Haru, a painter associated with the Shunyo Association, consolidating his initial decision to become a painter.

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Passion For Drawing

Aquirax Uno's passion for drawing began in his youth when, during high school, he was already collecting and copying illustrations from magazines, carefully noting the sources, editions, and page numbers – an obsessive gesture that reveals from an early age his meticulous inclination for visual archiving and the constant exercise of observation. This early habit would be decisive in his formation as an illustrator and designer, allowing him to develop technical agility and visual memory, elements that would accompany him throughout his career.

However, his path would take a decisive turn in 1949 when he entered the Design Department of the Nagoya Municipal High School of Arts and Crafts. Winning prizes in design competitions during his studies, his desire shifted towards a career as a designer. It was during this period, still in junior high, that he first encountered the word "illustration" in an English-Japanese dictionary. His "organizational mania peculiar to adolescence" led him to meticulously copy illustrations from magazines into notebooks, noting details such as the magazine name, year, issue number, and page, creating a kind of personal "illustration catalog." This "voracious and monomaniacal" work, although honing his technique, also made him feel that he lost something of the "spiritual brilliance" and "pure passion" of illustration in its rawest form.

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After graduating in 1952, Aquirax Uno began working on small design projects, such as matchboxes, and even formed a puppet theater group, the "Atelier Sappo." His entry into the professional scene came with the selection of his work "Taiti Art Supplies Store" for the 3rd Nittenbi Exhibition (Japan Advertising Artists Club), the first to include an open submission section. This earned him membership status in the Nittenbi for the Nagoya region. Shortly after, in 1955, he moved to Tokyo, seeking greater opportunities.

The move to Tokyo was motivated by the possibility of working in the advertising department of Calpis in Ebisu, through an acquaintance. The wait for this position lasted almost a year, a period he describes as being a "ronin." It was during this time that he participated in a contest by Kowa Colgen for the design of a frog symbol, winning the special prize alongside Makoto Wada, with whom he would frequently collaborate in the future – an encounter he considered "a strange thing."

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Intellectual Curiosities

In 1956, he finally joined Calpis Food Industry, where he produced newspaper ads and packaging designs. In the same year, he submitted five posters to the 6th Nittenbi Exhibition, and his work "The Old Man and the Sea" won the Lehrmen Star special prize, consolidating his position as a Nittenbi member in Tokyo. Uno describes the importance of Nittenbi at that time as central to the aspirations of young designers. Winning prizes and becoming a member was "the only dream." He recalls the variety of styles in his 1956 submissions as "a measure resulting from consideration based on insecurity," with influences from Anton Clavé and Takashi Kono. Achieving membership status in 1960 was the realization of a "dream within a dream." He reflects on the almost "sacred" power of Nittenbi and the unwavering faith young people placed in the organization, suggesting that the "design youth" experienced their anxieties and melancholies through the act of designing itself, immersed in a "design fever." The themes addressed in the submitted works – absurd literature, theater, natural history, modern music, science, philosophy – reflected the intellectual curiosities of this transition from adolescence to youth, channeled into graphic expression.

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Transition To Illustration

After graduating from the Nagoya Municipal High School of Arts and Crafts, Aquirax Uno began his career in the graphic design circuit. He had significant periods at the Japan Design Center and Studio Ilfil, where he delved into visual experiments that oscillated between the modern and the fantastic. In the 1950s and 60s, he actively participated in the Nissenshōbi exhibitions, receiving awards and recognition among the designers of the era. Aquirax Uno belonged to a generation that experienced design as an existential practice; for him and his contemporaries, the anxieties of youth, contact with avant-garde theater and literature, experimental music, and philosophy were converted into aesthetic material within the graphic universe.

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Different Languages

One of the striking features of his career was the fluid transit between different languages, as he illustrated children's books, covers for novels and magazines, posters for theater and films, and produced experimental works and artist books. But Aquirax Uno did not limit himself to illustrating: his images operate as intense visual interpretations of the texts, extrapolating the limits of the narrative and creating their own worlds, populated by dreamlike, melancholic, and often unsettling characters.

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