This exhibition was the first retrospective to trace the artistic development of Keiji Usami. Centered on paintings, it presented representative works from each period of his career, ranging from previously unpublished early works, through the emergence of the human figure that became a defining motif in his art, to his most recent works created during a public painting session in September 1991.
Usami was one of the artists featured in A View of Japanese Contemporary Art, the inaugural exhibition of the Seibu Museum of Art in 1975. Following solo exhibitions by artists such as Shusaku Arakawa, Kumi Sugai, Tadanori Yokoo, Hisao Domoto, and Natsuyuki Nakanishi, he was invited to hold a solo exhibition as part of this continuing lineage from the Seibu Museum of Art era.
The Sezon Museum of Modern Art holds a systematic a collection of approximately 50 works by Usami, spanning his career from the early period to his final years.