[1][2][3] Her paintings from the 1950s manifest various themes from distorted and dramatic portrayal of women to divine narratives based on traditional Japanese folklore.
[2][3] Since her days in the girls' school, Akutagawa had been interested in drawing and painting, but had paused her visual arts practice temporarily during college to focus on music.
[2][3] At that time, the artist used the technique of painting with wax dyes to create vivid imagery that manifests a series of semi-abstract portraits.
[2][7] Hachihyaku-kami no hakugai (八百神の迫害, Persecution of Eight Hundred Gods) was selected to be in the World·Today's Art Exhibition at Takashimaya Department Store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.
In 1957, in the second edition of the Exhibition of Four Artists (with Tatsuo Ikeda, On Kawara, Taizo Yoshinaka) at Muramatsu Gallery, Akutagawa exhibited multiple works including Nihonbuson no dokugyo taiji (日本武尊の毒魚退治) and Shiwa yori 4: Minwa yori ten kakeru (神話より(4)民話より天かける, From a Myth 4: Flying in the Air, 1956).
[2][8] Also at Muramatsu Gallery in the same year, the third solo exhibition of Akugatawa featured Kojikiyori (古事記より), which culminated a series of mythological works.
[2][3] During the years before her death, Akutagawa was developing a new direction of painting that pursued forms with limited colours such as red and black, vermillion and mauve.