Sawako Goda

Sawako Goda's surrealist paintings and photographs exploring glamorous Hollywood icons, cosmic visions, and crystalline forms, shaped by postwar Japanese devastation and Egyptian mysticism.

Why go

This is Goda's first European solo exhibition, presenting late oil paintings from the 1990s–2000s and early 1990s chromogenic prints. The show traces a singular avant-garde trajectory from postwar assemblage through Hollywood portraiture to abstract, visionary work influenced by ancient Egyptian iconography and the artist's experience of macular de

What to expect

Oil paintings and chromogenic prints spanning Goda's later decades, including ethereal portraits of actresses like Marlene Dietrich and Anouk Aimée, surrealist compositions featuring eyes and eggs as recurring motifs, and small-scale still-lifes of crystals and gemstones. Works range from sombre monochrome to luminous, dreamlike compositions.

Things to know

• Sawako Goda (1940–2016) was a Japanese avant-garde artist who worked across assemblage, painting, photography, and performance.
• Her childhood in postwar Hiroshima profoundly shaped her aesthetic, beginning with assemblages made from wartime debris.
• She lived in New York's Westbeth Artists Housing in 1971 with her husband Tomio Miki, a Rockefeller Fellow and contemporary of Yayoi Kusama.
• Goda relocated to a Nubian village in Egypt in 1985, an experience that catalyzed a shift toward abstract and visionary work.
• She designed stage sets and posters for underground Tokyo theater troupes including Jūrō Kara's Situation Theater and Shūji Terayama's Tenjō
• The exhibition runs June 10–July 22, 2026 at Salon 94 Palais-Royal in Paris.

Plan your visit

Salon 94 Paris is located at 30 galerie de Montpensier, Jardin du Palais-Royal, Paris 75001. Open Tuesday–Saturday, 12pm–6pm. Contact info@salon94.com or the gallery for ticket and accessibility information.