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"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen
"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen

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"TADANORI YOKOO – Tenjō Sajiki / LABORATORY OF PLAY (Membership Recruitment)", Japanese Contemporary Art Poster, Original Silk Screen 1967, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (c.73 × 103 cm) — Hand-signed in pen

Sale price $18,500.00

Original Japanese silkscreen for Shūji Terayama’s avant-garde troupe 演劇実験室・天井桟敷 (Tenjō Sajiki). Hand-signed by Tadanori Yokoo at the lower-right margin (blue biro; see photos).

This is an original Japanese silk screen poster printed in 1967 to recruit members and promote Tenjō Sajiki’s experimental seasons. A landmark of Yokoo’s psychedelic-pop period and a key document of Japan’s underground theatre graphics. Condition is excellent for the age with strong, saturated colour and full margins (see images).

Museum, market & provenance

  • Comparable museum holding: MoMA, New York preserves a seminal Yokoo 1960s silkscreen (Takarazuka / Grand Revue, 1965): https://www.moma.org/collection/works/8980. It underscores the museum-grade status of Yokoo’s early silkscreens. This particular silk screen is on permenant display in Tadanori Yokoo Museum of Contemporary Art in Kobe, Japan.

  • Provenance of this sheet: acquired from a Japanese-art collector in New Zealand and repatriated to Japan Poster Shop as a flagship work in our Yokoo holdings.

Why this silkscreen matters

Pop art’s credo—“a descent into the everyday”—is on full display. Yokoo plunders post-war Japanese vernacular (underground theatre broadsides, mass-market graphics, carnival imagery) and fuses it with Day-Glo psychedelia and ukiyo-e compositional wit. Silkscreen was the perfect vehicle:

  • Economical & subcultural (mid-60s): small runs (≈ 100 sheets) brought art to the street.

  • Deliberately ‘primitive’: flat, unshaded colour blocks echo woodblock prints and give each sheet a tactile, hand-pulled presence.

  • Artistically strategic: choosing silkscreen blurred high art, agit-prop and pop ephemera—momentum that led to Yokoo’s inclusion in MoMA’s landmark 1968 exhibition Word and Image.

Artwork highlights

  • Monumental elephant in halftone dots with psychedelic saddle reading “LABORATORY OF PLAY.”

  • Radiating pink/blue sunburst, swirling wave motif and carnival figures; ribbon 「演劇実験」 and placard 「定期会員 募集」 fold copy into image.

  • Metallic-gold title 天井桟敷, bold JUN block (“Designed by Young Men for Young Men”), and Yokoo cameo with belt TADANORI YOKOO.

  • Artist’s hand-signature in blue biro at lower right (in addition to printed credit).

Printing & notes

  • Technique: hand-pulled silkscreen (multi-pass inks incl. metallic gold)

  • Format: B1 (c.71 × 103 cm), unbacked

  • Signature: Hand-signed in pen at lower right

Please refer to the imagery (both front and back) as this is the exact poster that is for sale.

It is over 55 years old!

It is not a reproduction or a reprint.

Certificate of Authenticity included.

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