With postwar Nihonga’s departure from traditional historical narrative and beautiful nature paintings, artists trying their hands at vital expressions of emotion for a new age began to appear. Also, women started to advance in postwar Nihonga and society, with the notable emergence of many women artists active in their genres. We present for your viewing pleasure an exhibit of works by artists of significant achievement who lead contemporary Nihonga: Nobutaka Oka, Hajime Ogasawara, Shigeaki Kuromitsu, Hitoshi Kobayashi, Masaki Sai, Yukishige Sakamoto, Toshio Tabuchi, Yuji Tezuka, Hirohiko Hiraiwa, Reiji Hiramatsu, Sawato Fukui, Taimei Hori, Fumiko Hori, Susumu Maki, Masaaki Miyasako, Rieko Morita, Masato Yanagisawa, Emiko Yuguchi, et al.

Success as a Nihonga artist is ascribed to being attained usually after middle age. There are those talented few, however, who pass away at an early age before achieving a goal recognized by society or those who don’t seek fame but spiritual truth, fully sticking to a personal aesthetic. On exhibit are representative works by the following deceased artists who reached high, for a new
Nihonga: Takeshi Ushio, Matazo Kayama, Komei Kondo, Yasushi Sugiyama, Yuki Sekiguchi, Tatsuo Takayama, Kunio Takeuchi, Ikuo Hirayama, Yoshihiko Yoshida, and Junzo Yotsuda.

Shown are works not only from our Kyujin Yamamoto archive, which forms the core of the Narukawa Art Museum collection, but also from the brushes of Kazuho Hieda and Takehiko Mori. These two fine painters were taken under the wing of Yamamoto, a pioneer of postwar Nihonga innovation movement who pursued “true imagined landscapes” while observing the age he lived in. His art of high spirituality stands firmly as an important spiritual support for postwar Nihonga. Representative paintings of this leading light are exhibited in a unique presentation incorporating the works of the two artists said to be the direct descendants to carry on Yamamoto’s legacy.