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Keiichi Tanaami (1936–2024) created a series of unique works by referencing, distorting, and transforming characters created by Fujio Akatsuka (1935–2008), who was known as the king of gag manga.
In 2021, he created a series of massive gravure art prints based on a proposal from Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage. Titled TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! / Revolver, the works were displayed at the Art On Paper art fair in New York in 2023. As a result, the works were added to the New York Public Library collection.
Furthermore, in conjunction with the exhibition TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! /That's All Right held at Parco Museum Tokyo, an art book of the same title was published. This collection won the Tokyo ADC Hiromu Hara Award, the JAGDA Award, and the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Prize at the Japan Book Design Awards.
In 2025, at the Art of Manga exhibition (de Young Museum, San Francisco), all six works were presented side by side in the final exhibition room.
Keiichi Tanaami meets Fujio Akatsuka. The time has come for gravure-printed artworks to astonish viewers around the globe.
Tanaami was born in Tokyo in 1936, graduated from Musashino Art University, and awarded a special prize by the Japan Advertising Artists Club in 1958. Having immersed in American counterculture and pop art since the 1960s, he was an independent artist who had been actively crossing boundaries to pursue his creative endeavors, which range from animation to silk screens, manga-like illustrations, collages, experimental films, paintings, three-dimensional works, and more, without restricting himself to any medium or genre. Inspired by his encounter with Andy Warhol, he had continued to experimentally challenge the major themes tackled by contemporary art today, such as art and design, art and products, everyday beauty, and the public and art, while using the design methodology of editing to the present day. Through more than half a century of creative activities, he has gained a high reputation worldwide as one of the pioneers of pop art, which symbolizes postwar Japan. Tanaami's recent major exhibitions include Keiichi Tanaami: Adventures in Memory (2024, The National Art Center Tokyo, Tokyo), TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! That’ s All Right!!(2023, PARCO MUSEUM TOKYO, Tokyo)the solo exhibitions Manhattan Universe (2022, Venus Over Manhattan, New York), A Mirror of the World (2022, Nanzuka, Tokyo), Tokyo Pop Underground (2019, Jeffrey Deitch, New York), and Keiichi Tanaami (2019, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland); as well as the group exhibitions Tokyo: Art & Photography (2021, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), The World Goes Pop (2015, Tate Modern, London), International Pop (2015, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA), and many others. His work is in the permanent collections of MoMA (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Art Institute of Chicago, M+ (Hong Kong), National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.), and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art (Berlin).