Masayuki Nagare

Masayuki Nagare ( Japanese 流 政 之 , Nagare Masayuki; born February 14, 1923 in Nagasaki ; died July 7, 2018 ) was a Japanese sculptor during the Shōwa and Heisei periods .

life and work

Nagare Masayuki was born in Nagasaki. In 1941 he enrolled in Ritsumeikan and at the same time became an apprentice to a swordsmith. In 1943 he was drafted into the Navy and was trained and used as a pilot for the Mitsubishi Zero-Sen .

After the end of the Pacific War , Nagare illustrated the book “Abukanzō” ( や ぶ か ん ぞ う ) by Ayako Totsuka ( 戸 塚 文 子 ; 1913–1997) and the Japanese translation of “Mrs. Stone and Her Roman Spring ”( Tennessee Williams ). Then he dealt with high-burning ceramics and with wood and iron structures. In 1955 he exhibited structures made of wood and iron at a one-man exhibition entitled "Modeling a flight space" ( 飛行 空間 の 造型 Hikōkūkan no Zōkei ). In 1957 he developed a method of polishing surfaces on the one hand and leaving them raw on the other.

Nagare's work was first appreciated in America. And so he traveled to the United States in 1962 to design the wall of the Japanese pavilion at the New York World's Fair, a work he called "Stone Crazy". At the same time he signed a contract with the Staempfli Gallery (New York, NY). He has had a number of solo and group exhibitions in many parts of the United States.

In Japan, Nagare built a studio on the Aji Peninsula ( 庵 治 半島 ), near Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture . He received orders for very large stone ensembles, such as B. From 1967 to 1969 he worked on a sculpture for the Bank of America in San Francisco and from 1965 to 1975 on a sculpture for the plaza of the World Trade Center in New York. In Japan he created the sculpture "Stone Wind Flute " ( 風 の 石 笛 Kaze no Ishibue ) for the Sanwa building in Ōtemachi in Tōkyō. In 2004 the "Cloud Fortress Jr." was ready for the "Hokkaidō Museum of Modern Art" and in 2006 the "Nagare Chair", which had been waited for 30 years, was finally ready. - In Germany Nagare designed the small Japanese garden at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne with rocks, water and the stone sculpture “The flag in the wind” from 1980.

In 1974 Nagare received the "Great Shinchōsha Nihon Geijutsu Prize" ( 新潮社 日本 芸 術 大 賞 ), in 1978 the "Nakahara Teijirō Prize" ( 中原 悌 二郎 賞 ). - Nagares sculptures are almost always abstract, the naming is not meant to be explanatory.

In 2009 Nagares Atelier was converted into a foundation and opened to the public.

Remarks

1. ↑ His sculpture "Cloud Fortress" survived the fire of the terrorist attack in 2001, but was destroyed during the rescue work.
2. ↑ Named after the sculptor Nakahara Teijirō (1888–1921)

literature

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

Web links (images)

• "Three umbrellas lapped by waves" ( 波 し ぐ れ 三 度 笠 ) - Kotoura (Tottori Prefecture)
• The Nagare chair

Web links

• Nagare Foundation website, English

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Nagare is the family name, Masayuki the first name.