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Taro Okamoto (1911 - 1996) was eighteen years old in 1929 when he moved from Japan in the Far East, to Paris, the world center of art. Taro despaired of the other Japanese artists he met who had traveled to Paris to study, only to congregate together, painting conventional landscapes and dreaming of triumphant exhibitions on their return to Japan. Instead, he was determined to make himself self-sufficient within French society, becoming a boarding student at a private school, improving his French and adopting Western culture. Later he opened his own studio in the Montparnasse district of Paris, enjoying unique experiences for more than ten years before he returned to Japan in 1940.

In 1933 he became the youngest member of the Abstraction-Création group, producing several series of works, such as Kuukan (Space) and Contrepoint etc. In 1937 he submitted his Itamashiki ude (Sad Arm) in the Salon des Surindépendants and gradually moving away from Pure Abstract art, he left the Abstraction-Création group. This work was highly praised by André Breton and the following year he was invited to participate in the first Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (Paris). He deepened his relationship with members of the Surrealism movement such as Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray, Raymond Tanguy, etc. and in this way, rare for an artist, Okamoto participated at the forefront of two major avant-garde art movements in real-time.