Masters
Ikeda Masuo
Ikeda Masuo (February 23, 1934 - March 8, 1997)
An artist active in a wide range of fields beyond the traditional boundaries of art, including painting, printmaking, illustration, sculpture, ceramics, writing, and film directing.
In 1951, he won the Atelier Award for his oil painting "Landscape with a Bridge" at the first All-Japan Student Oil Painting Competition.
In 1957, he was selected for the Tokyo International Print Biennale. In 1960, he was awarded the Minister of Education Award at the same exhibition, bringing him into the limelight.
In 1965, he held the first solo exhibition by a Japanese artist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which attracted much attention.
In 1966, at the age of 32, he won the International Grand Prize in the Print Category at the Venice Biennale, the second most prestigious award for a printmaker after Munakata Shiko.
In 1977, he won the Akutagawa Prize for "Aegean Sea."
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet, a French painter, was a pivotal figure in the development of Impressionism and is often regarded as a key precursor to Modernism. His dedication to capturing nature as he perceived it set him apart and defined his long career. Monet's commitment to the philosophy of Impressionism is evident in his extensive body of work, particularly in his plein air (outdoor) landscape paintings.
The term "Impressionism" itself is derived from the title of Monet's painting "Impression, soleil levant" ("Impression, Sunrise"), which was exhibited in 1874 during the "exhibition of rejects." This exhibition was organized by Monet and his fellow artists as an alternative to the traditional Salon, challenging the established norms of the art world at the time. Monet's innovative approach and relentless pursuit of capturing natural light and atmosphere have left an enduring legacy in the world of art.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (French: [ɑ̃ʁi emil bənwa matis]; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of color and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (French for "wild beasts"). Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative patterns. In 1917, he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.
His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
Renoir
Renoir was one of the leading painters of the Impressionist group. He evolved a technique of broken brushstrokes and used bold combinations of pure complementary colours, to capture the light and movement of his landscapes and figure subjects. Following a visit to Italy in 1881 his style changed, becoming more linear and classical.
Renoir was born in Limoges in south-west France, where he began work as a painter on porcelain. He moved to Paris, joining the studio of the fashionable painter Charles Gleyre in around 1861-2. Courbet influenced the young Renoir. In Paris he encountered other painters, notably Monet and Sisley who were later to become Impressionists. In 1869 he and Monet worked together sketching on the Seine, and Renoir began to use lighter colours.
Around the 1880s Renoir travelled abroad, visiting Italy, Holland, Spain, England, Germany and North Africa. He deeply admired works by Raphael, Velazquez, and Rubens, and the latter's influence may be seen in his works.
Renoir's work seems always to be about pleasurable occasions, and reveals no great seriousness in his subjects. He apparently shocked his teacher Gleyre by saying, 'if painting were not a pleasure to me I should certainly not do it'.
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol gcYC (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí (/ˈdɑːli, dɑːˈliː/ DAH-lee, dah-LEE, Catalan: [səlβəˈðo ðəˈli], Spanish: [salβaˈðoɾ ðaˈli]), was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, Dalí received his formal education in fine arts in Madrid. Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age, he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements. He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. His best-known work, "The Persistence of Memory," was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most famous Surrealist paintings. Dalí lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) before leaving for the United States in 1940, where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948, where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism, and recent scientific developments.
Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, animation, fashion, and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays, and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science, and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork. His public support for the Francoist regime, his commercial activities, and the quality and authenticity of some of his late works have also been controversial. His life and work were an important influence on other Surrealists, pop art, popular culture, and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
There are two major museums devoted to Salvador Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
Kaii Higashiyama
Born in Yokohama in 1908, Higashiyama Kaii graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. After studying for a period in Germany, he was drafted in the Pacific War. Although Higashiyama faced a series of difficult trials, including the death of several relatives, these hardships helped open his eyes to beautiful landscapes. After the war, the artist created a series of masterpieces, such as Afterglow and Road, many of which were shown in the Nitten Exhibition. By earnestly confronting nature, Higashiyama created a deeply reflective world of art, which was highly esteemed for its universal qualities, reflecting the Japanese natural outlook and ethos. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1969. This exhibition commemorates Higashiyama's 110th birthday of this artist who is considered to be one of Japan's preeminent postwar painters.