2026.07.23time, move forward (full-length version)
2025./ acrylic on canvas, 727x530mm(20P).
This is a painting titled “time, move forward” by contemporary Japanese painter Toshiaki Shibata.
Mr. Shibata is also known as a scholar of the Russian avant-garde painter Pavel Filonov, and he pursues a compositional and powerful figurative expression centered on the human figure.
This critique will examine the artistic characteristics and appeal of this work from the following three perspectives.
1. Composition and Dynamism
The woman in the center of the painting, while seated in a chair, appears to be about to stand up. She twists her body dramatically, gazing to the right of the screen, suggesting that her gaze lies towards the future, or perhaps an unseen world.
The diagonal line formed by her legs and body, extending from the lower left to the upper right, gives the painting a powerful sense of direction and momentum.
While the first work in this series featured a clock in the background, this piece changes to a background reminiscent of planets, the moon, and swirling fluid. This background, “inspired by Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon’s (1875-1958) painting ‘The New Planet,’ in order to enhance the sense of movement and fluidity,” evokes a “dynamism of spacetime,” as if personal time (micro) is synchronized with the undulations of cosmic time (macro).
2. Unique Colors and Textures
The artist’s true strength lies in their layered and radiant color design, which is fully displayed here.
The harmonious interplay of complementary colors such as “red and green” and “blue and orange,” boldly placed on the skirt and background, enhances each other and imbues the entire canvas with intense vital energy.
The finely divided color arrangement and crystalline, mosaic-like brushstrokes seen in the depiction of clothing, the figure’s skin, and the floor give the impression of light being scattered and scattered. The paint, a static substance, exudes a presence as a “trembling substance.”
In addition to color field division based on brightness,
this effect, aiming for a more complex visual mixing through glazing and scumbling, creates a realistic sense of life in what should be a static painting.
3. The Spirituality Reflected in the Title
The title, “Time, Move Forward,” is encapsulated in the powerful posing and piercing gaze of the woman.
This title is said to be inspired by the work “Time, Move Forward!” by 20th-century composer Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (1915-1998).
It symbolically depicts the “strength of human will” to step into the future on one’s own two feet, against the backdrop of a turbulent era, without dwelling on past sentiments.
This is a truly impressive masterpiece, brilliantly blending a solid understanding of human anatomy, backed by traditional classical drawing skills, with a modern abstract space.