Matsumoto Shunsuke

Self-Portrait (1941)

Standing Self-Portrait (1942)

Matsumoto Shunsuke ( Japanese 松本 竣 介 ; born April 19, 1912 ; died June 8, 1948 ) was a Japanese painter in the Yōga style.

Life

Matsumoto Shunsuke was born as Satō Shunsuke ( 佐藤 俊 介 ) in Tokyo. In 1914, his father moved the family first to Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture and then to the prefecture capital Morioka for professional reasons . At the age of 16 Shunsuke won a prize at a school exhibition with a landscape drawing. When his brother decided to study the German language in Tokyo in 1929, his mother also moved with him to Tokyo. But he kept in touch with Morioka throughout his life.

In Tokyo he attended the private painting school of the "Taiheiyō Gakai Kenkyūjo" ( 太平洋 画 会 研究所 ). In 1936 he married and took the family name of his wife, Matsumoto, changing the first character of his first name, with the same pronunciation.

During the Second World War he was spared military service, but had to make himself available as a laborer for a while. He fell ill at the end of 1947 and died in June of the following year.

Life's work

Matsumoto was productive in drawing and painting at an early age, a self-portrait (oil on canvas) has come down to us at the age of 16, painting himself on the relay. When he came into contact with Western art through exhibitions and literature in Tokyo, he first took up influences from French modernism, Rouault , and Modigliani . Then George Grosz influenced him with his combination of drawing and painting, which Matsumoto processed in his "Blue Period", but without taking over its socially critical themes. Cityscapes became his subject in the 1940s, and he was always drawing. The oil paintings that were created on the basis of his drawings all depict a cloudy sky, perhaps as a reference to the war. Not only the city, but also people, portraits are part of his work. In recent years, a burning red has dominated his oil paintings against a dark background.

Influenced by Northern European Expressionism, Matsumoto found his unmistakable style in both his urban landscapes and his figurative representations.

photos

• 

  On the Road (1940)

• 

  Canal sketch (c. 1942)

• 

  Canal (1943)

• 

  Mrs. A (c. 1946)

• 

  Surroundings of
  St. Nikolai (c. 1947)

• 

  Woman with Sculpture (1948)

1. ↑ This picture was shown at the exhibition Japanese Painting in Western Style 1985 in the Museum for East Asian Art in Cologne.

Remarks

1. ↑ Such a change of surname is not uncommon in Japan today.

literature

• Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura (Ed.): Shunsuke Matsumoto and Thirty Painters of His Time. 1991.
• National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Ed.): Shunsuke Matsumoto Exhibition. 1986.
• Japan Foundation (Ed.): Japanese Painting in the Western Style, 19th and 20th Centuries. Exhibition catalog, Cologne, 1985.
• Mark H. Sandler: The Living Artist: Matsumoto Shunsuke's Reply to the State . Art Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3, Japan 1868-1945: Art, Architecture, and National Identity (Autumn, 1996), pp. 74-82

Web links

Commons : Matsumoto Shunsuke  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Matsumoto Shunsuke - Iwate Museum of Art website

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