Chapter Commentaries 4

In 1963, right before leaving the Nippon Design Center, Uno published ONDINE in collaboration with up-and-coming talent, such as designer Iwao Miyanaga, photographer Eikoh Hosoe, copywriter Junko Muneuchi, and actress Kyoko Enami.

In the years that followed (1970s), Uno worked on a number of collections of lithographs, silk-screen prints and other art featuring radically erotic females. These included Seven Witches (1972) and Pieces ABCDEF (1973). At that time, Uno had grown bored of requests for his metamorphosis drawings. He cut down on his creative activities, and, perhaps to escape from a feeling of being smothered in expectations, decided to reimagine his artistic style.

In 1974, Uno celebrated his fortieth birthday and published his first collection of art, Illustration Now: The World of Akira Uno. Akira Uno: Masquerade, published in 1982, included older works as well as paintings in his new style: nudes said to resemble the "Milky White Nudes" by the painter Tsuguharu Foujita, youths with wings sprouted on their backs, and so on.Uno used colored ink and pastel watercolors to emphasize the contours of the nudes, lending reality to the expression of flesh with his unique eroticism.

The new painting of the nude included in Akira Uno: Masquerade was a harbinger of the private exhibit that came later (Tokyu Department Store Shibuya Store, 1987), a rare glimpse of Uno's more classical artistic expression.