"TADANORI YOKOO - First Planning", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Limited Edition Silk Screen 1994, Ultra Rare, Size (c.73 x 103cm)
This poster is ultra rare and is displayed in the world`s most prestigious galleries such as MoMA in New York City. It is very difficult / almost impossible to find in any condition.
“LaChapelle Land” & “First Planning” – hand‑picked from the private archive of publishers Nicholas & Rhea Callaway.
This poster was gifted by Tadanori Yokoo to the Callaway`s. Direct provenance – each sheet comes from the Callaway family’s flat‑file and has never been on the open market. This First Planning copy is even inscribed “For Yukine and Nicholas Callaway” in graphite along the lower margin.
Offered here is one of only three surviving Tadanori Yokoo posters personally commissioned by the Callaways to celebrate the publication of LaChapelle Land (Callaway Editions, 1996).
Tadanori Yokoo – the Japanese graphic‑design icon whose work sits in the MoMA, V&A and Tate collections – created these riotously colourful compositions by collaging David LaChapelle’s trans‑pop photographs with his own psychedelic visual language.
Museum quality & rarity – Yokoo produced the posters in a tiny promotional run (believed to be <200). Very few were signed; virtually none were released outside the publisher’s circle.
Printing – dense, high‑pigment Japanese silkscreen on thick, uncoated art paper; colours remain ultra‑saturated and the black key plate is razor‑sharp.
Condition – stored flat since 1996, no folds, only the faintest edge handling; suitable for direct exhibition framing or archival linen‑backing.
"First Planning" by Tadanori Yokoo, 1994, Original Silkscreen Poster
As held in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/5986
This is an original 1994 silkscreen poster by legendary Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo, created for the First Planning Company and now housed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York [MoMA Accession Number: 238.1996].
A kaleidoscopic vision of postmodern Japan, First Planning is a masterwork of Yokoo’s mature period, blending traditional ukiyo-e motifs with contemporary commercial imagery and Buddhist iconography. In this composition, yokai-like cranes swing beneath a Shinto torii as a bottle of sake erupts beside a reclining Buddha — all rendered in a riot of neon gradients and meticulous silkscreen detail. It's part prayer, part parody — typical of Yokoo’s iconic visual language.
Originally commissioned by the Osaka-based First Planning Company, the poster was printed in an extremely limited run and was never sold publicly. It remains exceptionally rare today, especially in such pristine condition.
Yokoo’s works from this era are celebrated globally, and his graphic sensibility — a collision of psychedelia, pop, and Edo-era nostalgia — has profoundly influenced generations of artists and designers from Japan to the West.
In today's world, when advanced reproduction techniques and printing methods have been developed, silkscreen printing can be said to be an extremely primitive and imperfect printing method. However, it is precisely because of this primitive imperfection that silkscreen printing has been highly developed.
It is a medium that retains a handcrafted, intimate feel like woodblock prints or lithographs, not found in offset or primary color printing, which are more common printing methods. Such handcrafted printing methods are themselves subcultural, and are therefore suitable as a means of printing posters for subcultural groups, in the sense that the medium is the message.
Please refer to the imagery (both front and back) as this is the exact poster that is for sale.
We have provided additional imagery as the condition is phenomenal!!
It is over 31 years old!
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
