Tatsuhiko Yokoo

Tatsuhiko Yokoo

Tatsuhiko Yokoo ( Japanese 横 尾 龍 彦 , Yokoo Tatsuhiko ; * 1928 in Fukuoka ; † November 23, 2015 in Chichibu near Tokyo ) was a Japanese painter .

Life

Yokoo was born in the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka in 1928 , but soon emigrated with his family to Taiwan (then a Japanese colony ). After Japan's forced return to his home country by the defeat of the war, he studied in the department of Japanese painting at the Art Academy in Tokyo ( Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku ).

In 1962, Yokoo completed a year of study in Paris and Geneva on a scholarship from the Cistercian Order, which was awarded by the Catholic school in Japan, where he was employed as an art teacher .

After returning from his studies in Japan, between 1972 and 1977 he repeatedly traveled to Europe for longer periods of time, for example to ( Italy , Belgium , Germany , Austria ). In 1979 he finally moved to Germany. He came to Osnabrück through a German art patron who helped Yokoo to build up an economic base as an artist . Six years later he moved to Cologne to make a name for himself in the art metropolis.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Yokoo moved to East Germany in the Märkisch-Oderland district , where he set up a studio in Metzdorf in the municipality of Bliesdorf. The painter spent the summer months here, while in winter he returned to his studio in the Chichibu Mountains, in northern Tokyo .

Yokoo combined the different cultures of East Asian Japan and Central European Germany in its works and through its residences in Germany and Japan. Although Yokoo described himself as a Catholic Christian, his thinking and works of art are deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhist meditation has also had a firm place in the Catholic Church in Germany for several decades.

In Wriezen , Yokoo and the German sculptor Axel Anklam erected a memorial to the Japanese doctor Nobutsugu Koenuma .

Web links

• Official website
• Video , Tatsuhiko Yokoo Performances
• Life pictures , Tatsuhiko Yokoo