Oil on paper signed bottom left  Kazuo Shiraga studied painting at the Kyoto City Specialist School of Arts (now Kyoto City University of Arts). Shiraga specialized in Japanese-style painting at school, switching later to oil painting. Upon graduating in 1948, he formed Zero Group with Akira Kanayama, Saburo Murakami and Keiko Tanaka in 1952 & joined with them the Gutai Art Association in 1972 (disbanded with death of Jiro Yoshihara in 1972). His painting method involves dripping paint onto canvas instead of using a brush and painting strokes with his feet while hanging from a rope. An incomparable feeling of power and speed and stands as one of the monumental landmarks in the history of Japanese avant-garde art. By the time he joined the "Gutai" group, a Kansai-based avant-garde art group, in 1955, he had begun to paint directly with his hands and feet, abandoning the brush all together. Shiraga commented his method of painting as a wish to display "traces of action carried out with speed."... In 1971 he entered a Boudhist monastery which broke the Gutai group.