# On Kawara artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/on-kawara/
Profile generated: 2026-05-27T14:29:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1932-12-24
- Death date: 2014-07-10
- Nationality: Japanese, American
- Movements: Conceptual Art
- Common media: acrylic on canvas, postcards with rubber-stamped text, telegrams, artist books, photography

## About On Kawara

On Kawara was a Japanese-born conceptual artist whose decades-long practice measured the passage of time and the fact of being alive. Born in 1932 and based in SoHo, New York, from 1965 until his death in 2014, he produced several rigorously sustained series over nearly fifty years. The best known is the Today series (1966–2013), for which he hand-lettered each day's date in white acrylic on a monochrome canvas, completing it before midnight or destroying it. Other serial works include the I Got Up postcards, I Am Still Alive telegrams, and the artist book One Million Years. Kawara represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1976, and his work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim, and the Centre Pompidou. His restrained, meditative approach to recording daily existence places him among the central figures of postwar Conceptual art.

## Common works and media

Acrylic-on-canvas Date Paintings from the Today series (produced in several standardized sizes, each lined with a local newspaper from the city where it was made). Rubber-stamped postcards (I Got Up; I Went). Telegrams reading I AM STILL ALIVE. Artist books including One Million Years and journals recording daily activities. Drawings and mixed-media works incorporating maps and lists.

## Market and appraisal context

On Kawara's works appear regularly at major auction houses, with the Today (Date Paintings) series commanding the strongest results. Value depends on the specific date's cultural resonance, the painting's size format, the locale indicated by the newspaper lining, and exhibition or collection provenance. The I Got Up postcards, I Went maps, and I Am Still Alive telegrams trade more frequently and at lower price points, offering collectors accessible entry into the artist's practice. Condition is particularly important for the newspaper-backed canvases and the fragile postcard works. Attribution is generally reliable thanks to Kawara's own meticulous record-keeping, though provenance documentation should always be verified.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research from museum, library-authority, and scholarly sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q698256
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Kawara
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500120601
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/100269964/
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85200387
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/3030
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/on-kawara-12834
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/43662