Masaaki Yamada was born in 1929 in Tokyo, Japan, and passed in 2010. His series of striped works, in particular, is regarded as his masterpiece and has received high international acclaim. He advocated “contract with painting” and continued to paint as part of his life under the same roof, producing 5,000 works over 50 years. By returning the specificity of painting to everyday life, the uniquely personal form of abstract expression that he pursued was unrivalled in that generation. The process of dismantling iconography seen in the transition from the tranquil still-life paintings in his early years to abstract paintings shows a close connection that resonates strongly with his later abstract expressions. In addition to the solo exhibition at Fuchu Art Museum in 2005, large-scale solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto from 2016 to 2017 after his death, Yamada also participated in the 19th São Paulo Art Biennial (1987), “Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky” (1994), which toured the Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yokohama Museum of Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Takamatsu Art Museum, and museums in various regions.