Yoshitomo Nara (1959) - N’s YARD - Missing in Action - Anni ‘90

【Item Description】
奈良美智 Yoshitomo Nara（1959–）
"Missing in Action" — Official Poster published by N's YARD (B3 Size)
This is an official poster of Missing in Action (1999), published by N's YARD — Yoshitomo Nara's own private art space and museum located in Nasu, Tochigi.
There is no ambiguity in this image. A small girl in a red dress stands squarely in the centre of the frame, feet planted, arms loose at her sides, and stares directly at you. Her eyes — one dark green, one lighter — are narrowed with an expression that is neither anger nor aggression but something altogether more unsettling: a complete, unflinching refusal to look away. She is not threatening you. She is simply seeing you, entirely, in a way that makes looking back feel like a test you are not sure you will pass.
Missing in Action is widely regarded as one of the defining works of Nara's early career, and one of the most iconic images in contemporary Japanese art. Painted in 1999 at the moment Nara's international reputation was rapidly taking shape, the work crystallises everything that made his practice so immediately compelling: the deceptively simple figure, the charged gaze, the cartoon-like form that conceals an emotional interior of extraordinary depth. The title — Missing in Action — adds a further layer of unease to the encounter, a quiet provocation that resists easy resolution.
The original painting is held in a private collection. A later version, Missing in Action — Girl Meets Boy (2005), is held in the permanent collection of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. Most significantly, Missing in Action was selected as the image for the official exhibition poster of the landmark retrospective "Yoshitomo Nara", which traveled from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to Museum Frieder Burda and the Hayward Gallery, London (2024–2025) — chosen, out of the artist's entire body of work, as the single image to represent the exhibition to the world. There is no clearer measure of the status this work holds.
The N's YARD logo appears in black at the lower left; the verso carries the title, artist's name, copyright notice, and year, confirming its authenticity as an official N's YARD publication. A rare opportunity to own one of the most iconic images in the history of Japanese contemporary art.

【Size】
Height: 51.5 cm Width: 36.4 cm

【Weight】
90 g

【Condition】
This poster is in new, unused condition — unplayed and pristine, with no folds, tears, fading, or damage of any kind.

【Artist Profile】
Yoshitomo Nara (born December 5, 1959, Japan) is one of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese contemporary artists of his generation. He earned his BFA (1985) and MFA (1987) from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, before moving to Germany to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the late 1980s, drawing on both Eastern and Western cultural influences throughout his career. Growing up in postwar Japan — an era of expanding exposure to Western pop culture including comics, Disney animation, and rock music — deeply informed his early artistic development. Nara's signature imagery of solitary children with large, soulful eyes carries layers of emotional complexity: innocence paired with defiance, tenderness edged with melancholy. He has consistently stated that his work transcends its cartoon-like surface to engage with deeper questions of spirituality, memory, and the human condition. Nara has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major retrospective that toured from 2003 to 2005, and a further retrospective that traveled from the Guggenheim Bilbao to Museum Frieder Burda and the Hayward Gallery, London (2024–2025). His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the National Museum of Art, Osaka, among many other prominent institutions.

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