The fickle hand of artistic fate is seen not so much in whom it plucks from the depths of obscurity, but in how high those chosen are raised up. A case in point is the multidisciplinary avant-garde artist Hideo Sugita, better known by his alias Ei Q (1911-60).
Thanks to 100 years having accrued since his birth, this important artist, who has largely been out of the limelight since his death, is now enjoying a major retrospective at two of Saitama Prefecture's larger museums: Urawa Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. The location choice for this joint exhibition reflects the fact that Ei Q, who was born in Miyazaki Prefecture, spent the last 10 years of his life in Urawa City, which was merged in 2001 into Saitama City.
A visit to either one or both of these venues reveals that Ei Q is a neglected giant of Japanese modern art. If the big names of 20th-century avant-garde in Japan, such as Taro Okamoto and Yayoi Kusama, were on display you could be sure that these museums would be busy; but, as it is, this show is so poorly attended that visitors are likely to be outnumbered by the museum attendants. Yet on the basis of the art presented here, the argument could easily be made that Ei Q was more talented, more original and more significant to Japanese art than his rivals.