Takashi Murakami (Tokyo, 1962) is a contemporary artist whom, through painting and digital or commercial mediums, has developed a language that blends popular culture with formal elements of Japanese traditional art.
He applied for the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo where he received his doctorate in Nihonga, a discipline that blends the traditional study of east and west.
In 1990 Murakami begins his career as a contemporary artist and in 1993 he created Mr. DOB, a self-portrait. Develops a new artistic style he calls "Superflat" which is characterized by the bi-dimensionality and the fusion of traditional Japanese art, anime, manga and Pop Art. Soon he begins to be called as the Japanese Andy Warhol.
In 1998 he opened a study of the Hiropon Factory in Brooklyn and begins to participate in exhibitions in America.
In 2000 he organizes an exhibition entitled "Superflat" at the Parco Gallery in Tokyo that will also visit the MOCA in Los Angeles. In this exhibition presents the anime culture as part of the artistic and cultural heritage of Japan.
Murakami founded Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd in 2001 and opens branch offices in both Tokyo and New York.
In 2002 takes place the exhibition "Takashi Murakami: Kaikai Kiki" at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The following year he installed at Rockefeller Center in New York his biggest public sculpture, "Reversed Double Helix" and begins to develop works for Louis Vuitton.
Between 2008 and 2009 it's being organized a retrospective entitled "Murakami" at the MOCA in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Museum fur Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
