The David Zwirner gallery has confirmed Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara has passed away.

Best-known for his Today series, the New York-based artist created his signature “date paintings” all around the world, conforming to local dating conventions and languages based on his location. When the artist created one of the painting in a country with a non-Latin alphabet, he would use Esperanto.

Phaidon has more details about the important date works:

New York occupies a central importance within the Today Series as the city where the first date painting was made (“January 4, 1966”) and where the majority of the works have been executed. It also marks the location of three significant paintings produced on the days surrounding the first manned moon landing in July 1969 (“July 16, 1969”; “July 20, 1969”; and “July 21, 1969”); each presents the largest canvas size Kawarau has used for the date paintings (61 x 89 inches). Each of his paintings, when not on display, is encased in a handmade cardboard box. On certain days, a newspaper clipping from the city in which the painting is executed is selected and used to line the interior of the box. The actual newspaper clippings accompanying the ‘moon’ works are exhibited alongside the paintings and offer a narrative component, with the headline of one reading “Man walks on moon.” Kawara invents rules or self-imposed limits for his work. There are four or five coats of the same brand of paint on each canvas. The lettering is hand-painted. It is always white and occupies pretty much the same place on each canvas, though the canvases are not always the same size or colour.

During his life, the artist refused to give interviews or talk about his work.

A major retrospective of his work, Silence, is slated to open at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum in February 2015. The exhibition will be the first full representation of Kawara’s art, beginning in 1964 and including every category of work.

In his book Kant After Duchamp, Thierry de Duve provides a context for Kawara’s work in 20th-century art history (emphasis mine):