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Yutaka Matsuzawa (松澤 宥 Matsuzawa Yutaka) (February 2nd, 1922 – October 15th, 2006) was a Japanese artist, considered to be one of the fathers of Japanese conceptualism.

Early life
Yutaka Matsuzawa was born in 1922 in Shimosuwa in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. In 1941, he enrolled at Waseda University, Tokyo, to study architecture . During the war, he was mobilised to work at a factory in Niigata Prefecture. When he returned to Tokyo, he saw the city in ruins after the fire bombings, which inspired his graduation thesis essay, On the Ruins:

"That which humans make will eventually perish, humans will eventually perish."

Matsuzawa became disillusioned with architecture and, upon returning to his hometown in Shimosuwa, he shifted his interest towards art. From 1952 he submitted his works to the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. In 1955 he became a Fulbright scholar and left for the United States of America to teach at Wisconsin State College–Superior, but moved to New York a year later. In 1957 he returned to Japan.

Post-Revelation
In June 1964 Matsuzawa had what he later called a "Revelation". While still laying in bed early morning, he heard a voice that commanded him to "vanish objets" After the event, in his art he decided to focus on the idea of  kannen bijutsu, or "notion art". The idea of kannen refers to the meditative visualisations of Pure Land Buddhism. He propagated the theory of vanishing, or that artists should give up the material and instead focus on the usage of language. Vanishing was also meant to be the core of anti-civilization. In 1970, he participated in the Tokyo Biennale 1970, which was considered to be Japan's first truly international exhibition. The theme of the exhibition was Between Man and Matter. Matsuzawa's work was entitled My Own Death and consisted of an empty room with two signs hanging on each entryway, both of them reading:

"When you go calmly across this room, go my own death across your mind in a flash of lighting, that is my future genuine death and is similar not only to your own future death but to past hundred hundred millions of human beings’ deaths and also to future thousand trillions of human beings."

Death and afterward
Yutaka Matsuzawa died on October 15th, 2006 in Shimosuwa. His house is currently home to the Matsuzawa Yutaka Psi Room Foundation, which focuses on preserving his works and legacy.

Posthumous exhibitions
In 2014, Misa Shin Gallery in Tokyo organised an exhibition called ''Matsuzawa Yutaka. Begin with Vanishment''.

In 2017, Ota Fine Arts in Roppongi held an exhibition From Nirvana to Catastrophe: Matsuzawa Yutaka and his 'Commune in Imaginary Space', which focused on the 1969-1973 period in Matsuzawa's work.

Selected works

 * 1958 The Bird of Psi Nr. 9
 * 1961 Psi Altar
 * 1966 Ju (Blessings): Talisman of Vanishing
 * 1967 White Circle
 * 1970 My Own Death
 * 1971 Post Nirvana