Yasse Tabuchi was born in 1921 in Kitakyûshû in the south of Japan. He pursued his studies in history of art at the Imperial University of Tokyo between 1946 and 1951. At the same time, he partook in numerous exhibitions from 1947 and won the Okada Prize in 1949. In 1950, he selected works to exhibit at the Salon de Mai in Tokyo. Fascinated by avant-garde painting, he decided to move to Paris in 1951. He joined the Sorbonne University Paris IV and met Alechinsky, Appel, Corneille and Asger Jorn and Hartung. From 1953 he exhibited at the Virtual Reality exhibition, and at the Salon de Mai from 1955.
Tabuchi’s curiosity to visit Europe continued to grow. He visited Denmark where he was captivated by Scandanavian archeology, and showcased his first solo exhibition at Copenhagen in 1954. A second solo exhibition followed in 1955 at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. He subsequently travelled to Holland and Germany, before composing his first exhibition organised by the Lucien Durand Gallery in 1956.
Through abandoning his surrealist tendencies in his canvases, Tabuchi perfectionned a poetic portrayal, mixing interior images and mystical emblems whilst alluding to these pictorial signs. His initial drawing style disappeared and his compositions consisted of colourful markings; “an explosion of vegatal and chromatic where the suppleness of the lines and shapes come together spontaneously to create a dynamic yet stable composition.” (Georges Boudaille, Yasse Tabuchi Exhibition: Cimaise March-April 1956).
In 1959 Tabuchi settled in the village of Vauhallan in the department of Essonne, where he lived and worked until his last years. He also opened another studio in Croisic in Brittany in 1987. He returned to Japan in 1960 for a major exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery. He essentially freed himself from both occidental and oriental influences, creating and proving the vitality in his art. In 1964 he signed a contract with Jean Pollak, director of the prestigious Ariel Gallery in Paris. Tabuchi then published seven books on the subject of sensitivity and thoughts between the East and West. In 1985 he was awarded the medallion for Officer, Order of Arts and Letters (médaille d’Officier des Arts et des Lettres) in France. The artist passed away in 2009 in Vauhallan at the age of 88.