Kazuo Shiraga (1924–2008) was a Japanese avant-garde painter and performer, famed for making explosive abstractions with his feet while suspended by a rope. A founding member of the Gutai Art Association, he helped redefine postwar art by treating paint as matter and the body as instrument. Trained in traditional methods, he co-founded the Zero group (1952) before joining Gutai under Jirō Yoshihara. In 1955 he staged “Challenging Mud,” wrestling in a pit of earth; in the studio he poured heavy oil on floor-laid canvases and, gripping a rope, skidded pigment with his feet, leaving ridged tracks of momentum. Often titling works after heroes of the Chinese classic “Water Margin” (Suikoden), he linked bodily courage to pictorial force. In 1971 he entered Buddhist training at Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, later serving as a Tendai monk while continuing to paint. Discipline refined his timing and restraint, and later canvases condense action into decisive sweeps. From the late 1980s, renewed interest in Gutai placed him at the center of postwar art history. His legacy is principled freedom: rigorous practice that liberates instinct, materials that answer back, and painting as a courageous act enacted in real time —discipline meeting risk, energy tempered by clarity.