Ono Tadashige

Ono Tadashige ( Japanese 小野 忠 重 ; January 19, 1909 in Mukōjima, Sumida , Tokyo - October 17, 1990 ) was a Japanese woodcut artist and author of works on woodcut art.

life and work

Ono was born in Mukōjima, the son of a grocery store owner. From 1921 he attended the Waseda trade school. In 1924 he joined the artist group Tsutahara-kai ( 蒼 原 会 ), which specialized in watercolors . He then studied under Okada Saburōsuke at the Hongō Institute for Painting ( 本 郷 絵 画 研究所 , Hongō kaiga kenkyūsho ). After graduating from Waseda, he worked in the family's company, while also continuing to work as an artist. In 1929 he took part in the exhibition of the Association of Proletarian Artists ( 日本 プ ロ レ タ リ ア 美術 家 同盟 , Nihon puroretaria bijutsuka dōmei ) and began making woodcuts, mostly in small format and monochrome. With Fujimaki Yoshio and others he founded the New Woodcut Group ( 新版 画集 団 , Shin hanga shūdan ) in 1932 . In 1941 he founded the publishing house Sōrin-sha ( 双 林 舎 ), with which he published books on woodcut.

After the Second World War he worked for a short time as a teacher in Tsuyama . After his return to Tokyo he worked as a publisher again, developing his own style of color woodcut on a black background ( 印 刻 多色 刷 り 木版 , inkoku tashoku-zuri mokuhan ), which shaped all of his later work.

In 1956 Ono's first solo exhibition took place. In 1961 he received an invitation to participate in the first exhibition of contemporary Japanese woodcuts. In 1963 he was appointed lecturer in the woodcut art department at the Tokyo Art School . In 1976 he received the Medal of Honor on the Violet Ribbon .

Ono's house was opened in 1994 as the "Ono Woodcut Museum " ( 小野 忠 重 版画 館 , Ono Tadashige Hanga-kan ).

literature

• Lawrence Smith: Modern Japanese Prints 1912-1989 . British Museum, 1994. ISBN 1-55859-871-5 .
• Helen Merritt: Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints. The Early Years. University of Honolulu Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8248-1200-X .

Web links

• Tokyo portal to the Ono Museum

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