Artwork Description

Title: Peach of Kunlun Mountain 5
Artist: Keiko Moriuchi
Date: 2018
Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 35.8 x 28.6 in (91 x 72.7 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
Peach of Kunlun Mountain 5 is a vivid and intricately structured mixed media work by Keiko Moriuchi, completed in 2018. The composition features a neatly gridded array of concentric floral forms—painted in lively layers of pink, red, turquoise, and green—punctuated with jewel-like embellishments and framed within three radiant borders: a reflective silver field, an inner coral-pink contour, and a textured red outer edge. The result is both rhythmic and ornamental, calling forth associations with textiles, mosaics, and ritual offerings.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Moriuchi’s approach in this work recalls Gutai’s material experimentation, yet moves beyond it into a world of mythic reference and decorative abstraction. The gridded repetition of the peach motif suggests the influence of minimalist systems, yet her tactile palette and layered media create an exuberant visual language. The Title: and iconography again evoke the sacred Peach of Immortality from Chinese legend, here arranged as a blooming orchard of symbolic vitality—lush, luminous, and celebratory in tone.

3. Historical Context
As a student of Jiro Yoshihara and participant in the Gutai movement, Moriuchi developed an artistic language rooted in postwar material radicalism and refined through her transnational experiences. Her relocation to New York in the 1960s positioned her at the crossroads of Eastern and Western abstraction. This 2018 work reflects her later career synthesis: playful yet meditative, historically aware yet formally liberated. It echoes her early performative gestures but is distilled into a compositional grammar of lush repetition and spiritual resonance.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The artwork is in very good condition. The canvas is structurally sound and the surface shows no signs of damage, loss, or wear. The layered pigment, metallic foils, and textural details remain vibrant and secure. No conservation interventions have been recorded or required.

6. Artistic Significance
Peach of Kunlun Mountain 5 stands as a vibrant testament to Moriuchi’s sustained exploration of myth, repetition, and visual pleasure. With its jewel-toned palette and deliberate composition, the work fuses sacred symbolism with contemporary abstraction. It offers a window into Moriuchi’s enduring legacy as an artist who, while born of the Gutai avant-garde, forged a singular and poetic path of her own—one where history, materiality, and personal mythology coexist in radiant harmony.