Kumagai Morikazu

Kumagai on the Sakhalin journey, back row on the left

Kumagai Morikazu ( Japanese 熊 谷 守 一 ; April 2, 1880 , born in Tsukechi , Gifu Prefecture - August 1, 1977 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese painter of the Yōga direction .

Life

Morikazu was the third son of a silk merchant and the first mayor of Gifu City . At the age of 17 he went to Tokyo to become a painter. There he attended an art school and learned to paint in the Japanese style ( Nihonga ). In 1900 he moved to the Tōkyō bijutsu gakkō, today's Geidai , where he was taught in the department of western painting by his teachers Nagahara Kōtarō and Kuroda Seiki . In 1904 he graduated.

In 1905 Morikazu joined a research group at the Ministry of Agriculture, which was to investigate Sakhalin for two years and saw the island world in this way, which he captured in drawings.

In 1916 he was accepted into the Nika-kai ( 二 科 会 ) artists' association . Until 1942 he exhibited pictures there annually. During this time he was on friendly terms with musicians such as Fukuya Tatsumi (pianist), Kawakami Jun (violinist), the composer Nobutoki Kiyoshi and Yamada Kōsaku . In 1922, now in his early forties, he married Ōe Hideko.

In 1932, Morikazu settled in Toyko, Toyoshima District and stayed there until he died. In 1938 he began to paint again in the Nihonga style. After the Second World War he was not again a member of the temporarily dissolved Nika-kai, but became a member of the newly founded Dainiki-kai ( 第二 紀 会 ). He left this in 1951 and switched to the Seikō-kai ( 清 光 会 ) led by Gotō Shintarō . When the Dainiki-kai disbanded after Goto's death in 1954, Morikazu no longer joined any artist society.

In 1967 Morikazu was exhibited in a gallery in Paris and attracted attention. In 1968 he was supposed to be awarded the Japanese Cultural Order, but rejected it out of modesty. Also in 1972 he rejected another medal, ( 勲 三等 , kunsantō ), with the words, "I actually didn't do that for the fatherland".

In 1976 Morikazu saw that a museum should be set up for him in his place of birth. He died the following year at the age of 97.

To the work

Morikazu's early work is characterized by muted tones, brown, red and black, such as the self-portrait as a final thesis in 1904 at the Tōkyō bijutsu gakkō, or the self-portrait from 1909 with the title “Candle” ( ロ ー ソ ク , Rōsoku ). From 1918, for example, his palette became more colorful and his painting style approached Fauvism. The best-known picture is that of his son Yō, who died early, on his death bed, "The day on which Yō died" ( 陽 の 死 ん だ 日 , Yō no shinda hi ), 1928. A picture of Mount Fuji from 1937 also belongs to this phase.

From 1938/39 Morikazu began to surround the painterly colored surfaces with matching monochrome lines. His late style is characterized by the composition of the picture with areas outlined in color, which are now monochrome throughout. The oil painting “Hydrangeas” ( あ じ さ い , Ajisai ) from 1975 consists of only five blue circles in front of green patches on a brown background. His pictures of this kind may appear naive at first glance, but you can still see the organizing hand on them.

Most of the works are done in oil, but Morikazu also painted a number of watercolors with ants, frogs, dragonflies, and snails.

literature

• Imaizumi et al. a .: Kumagai Morikazu . Asahi kurabu bessatsu, 1978.

Remarks

1. ↑ Today as the Tsukechi-chō district of Nakatsugawa .
2. ↑ The works from this time were lost in the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 .

Web links

• Kumagai Museum in Nakatsugawa (Japanese)

• Morikazu Kumagai's Cats

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