Horiuchi Masakazu

Horiuchi Masakazu ( Japanese 堀 内 正 和 ; born March 27, 1911 in Kyōto ; died April 13, 2001 in Tōkyō ) was a Japanese sculptor of the Shōwa period .

life and work

Horiuchi Masakazu at the age of fifteen came under the influence of the constructivist tendency advocated by Murayama Tomoyoshi and others. Thereupon he began with the production of abstract figures in the constructivist sense. In 1929 he enrolled in the sculpture department of the "Technical High School Tōkyō" (東京 高等 工 芸 学校, Tōkyō kotō kōgei gakkō), the forerunner of the Tōkyō Kōgyō Daigaku . The following year, his sculpture entitled "Head" (頸, Kubi) was accepted for the 16th exhibition of the Nikakai artist group (二 科 会).

As a result, he left the school where he had previously studied and switched to the Nika-kai school, the Nika-juku (二 科 塾). There he trained under Fujikawa Yūzō . In 1936 he submitted an abstract work entitled “Experiment” (試 作, Shisaku) to the 24th exhibition at Nika-kai, and in 1947 he became a member of the association.

In 1950 Horiuchi became a professor at the "Kyōto Municipal College of Painting" (京都 市立 美術 専 門 kte) and worked in this position until 1974. In 1957, he showed work at the Japan exhibition at the 4th  São Paulo Biennale and in many other places around the world . In 1963, his “sea breeze” (海 の 風, Umi no kaze) won the 6th Takamura Kōtarō Prize and in 1969 his “dichotomy of the festival” (立方体 の 二等 分, Rippōtai no nitōbun) highest prize at the 1st “Exhibition of Modern international sculptures ”(現代 国際 彫刻 展, Gendai kokusai chōkoku ten). In 1966 he withdrew from the Nika-kai, of which he had long been a member. After that he did not join any artists' association.

In the years after the war , his style was determined by experimenting with geometric shapes, with humorous elements becoming apparent after 1960. In addition to the works mentioned above, “oblique cones and cylinders with oblique openings” (円 錐 を 斜 め に 登臨 受 け る 円 筒, Ensui o naname ni tōrinukeru entō) and zigzag bodies (ジ グ ザ グ 立方体, Jiguzagu rippōtai).

In 1980 he and the painter Yamaguchi Takeo (1902–1983) were honored with an exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo . From December 8, 2018 to March 24, a Horiuchi exhibition entitled "Curious minds, joyful forms" was held in the Hayama Building of the Museum of Modern Art of Kanagawa Prefecture .

Remarks

1. ↑ Named after the sculptor Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956).

Web links (images)

A selection of works, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo:

• し か く い 枠 の な か の ね じ れ た 枠 - "In a rectangular frame a winding one" (1965)
• こ れ は ひ と つ の リ ン ゴ で あ る - "This is a single apple" (1971)
• 線 美人 - "Lines beautiful" （oJ)

literature

• Tazawa, Yutaka: Horiuchi Masakazu . In: Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art. Kodansha International, 1981. ISBN 0-87011-488-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 04ª Bienal do Museo de Arte Moderna de São Paulo 1957 - Japon , accessed on May 1, 2019.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Horiuchi is the family name, Masakazu the first name.