Yasuaki (Aki) Ishizaka is a highly experienced veteran of the art world with a professional career spanning four decades, including 15 years at Sotheby’s Japan and 22 years as an art dealer. Additionally, throughout this time, Aki has remained active as a writer and lecturer. He served as Managing Director of Sotheby’s Japan from 2005 to 2014 and then as Chairman & Managing Director from 2018 to 2024. As Senior Advisor, he will focus on securing key consignments from Japan, building and maintaining relationships with important Japanese private collectors and institutions.
Aki's achievement at Sotheby’s includes securing major consignments from Japan, such as Pablo Picasso’s Femme au Chien (1962), which achieved US$54.9 million in 2019 and established an auction record for Picasso’s works from the1960s period. Other career highlights includes successful bidding and auction records set for works by Edgar Degas, Norman Rockwell and Edward Hopper, and more recently, Gustav Klimt’s Insel im Attersee (1901-1902), which sold for US$53.1million in 2023.
After seven years at Mitsubishi Corporation, Aki ran an art gallery in Tokyo from 1988 to 2005. During his tenure as a dealer, he sold more than 30 works to public museums in Japan including pieces by Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Gustave Courbet and Yayoi Kusama. In the 1990s, Aki helped shape a significant corporate collection in Japan focusing on American contemporary art. He acted as UNIQLO’s licensing agent to secure copyrights for Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger and Roy Lichtenstein. His book The Other Side of the Mega Art Business (in Japanese) was published in 2016 and has been reviewed by major Japanese newspapers. From 2017 to 2018, he wrote articles for Forbes JAPAN.
Aki is currently a part-time lecturer at the Tokyo University of the Arts where he has been teaching art business since 2007. He graduated in 1980 with a degree in Law from Seikei University. He is fluent in Japanese, English and German.
收起