727-272

Installed on the second floor of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in THE space for which it was specifically designed, the huge polyptych 727-722 (The Emergence of God at the Reversal of Fate) is notable in every way. It took Takashi Murakami and his many collaborators three years of extraordinary work to create this complex, visually powerful series of semi-figurative, semi-abstract paintings on 16 panels stretching out over 24 metres.

Following in the footsteps of great Far Eastern painters, in this flowing work he includes quotations of the Chinese and Japanese masters whose legacy he unambiguously acknowledges “with a remarkable eccentricity that undoubtedly puts them as far ahead of their time as possible”. This piece of pictorial bravura marked a turning point in Murakami's work. Henceforth, he focused more on reflections about the depth of history and art history.

An ambitious commission for the Pinault Collection, the only time 727-722 ever left the Palazzo Grassi’s prestigious main salon was in 2014 for a show at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, "Art Lovers".