Sawato Fukui Exhibition

Otaru City Museum of Art

Finished

Artists

Sawato Fukui

Japanese-style painter Sawato Fukui was born in 1937 in Shinmachi, Asahikawa, the eldest son of Teiichi and Chie Fukui.
His interest in art began early, and when he was in Shiomidai Junior High School, he was taught by Kaoru Kono, a printmaker belonging to the Kokuga-kai (National Painting Society). Although he had a yearning for the world of Japanese-style painting, which he learned about from art books, the history of Japanese-style painting in Hokkaido was young, and there were few institutions and instructors to study it.

Fukui's father, Teiichi, was an English teacher at Otaru Choryo High School in Hokkaido, and Fukui studied there until his sophomore year of high school when his father was transferred to Sapporo Kita High School. After graduation, he moved to Tokyo to study at Nihon University College of Art, but a chance encounter with Ikuo Hirayama, then 28 years old and an assistant professor at Tokyo University of the Arts, convinced him to enter the University of the Arts, and in 1961 he entered the Japanese Painting Department of Tokyo University of the Arts. After completing the master's course at the same university, he became an assistant at the University of the Arts and participated in the reproduction of the mural paintings of the Golden Hall of Horyuji Temple, and in 1991 he became a professor of Japanese painting.

He was awarded the Incentive Prize at the 54th Inten Exhibition in 1969, and received the Incentive Prize at the same exhibition seven times until 1981, the Japan Art Institute Prize in 1982 and 1983, the Prime Minister's Prize in 1991, and the Minister of Education Prize in 1993. From the beginning, his style was full of delicate lyricism, but in the 1980s, as he traveled to China and India to conduct research, his feelings for the faraway lands that are the origin of Japanese art condensed and produced a series of representative works. He has been a member of the Nihon Bijutsu-in since 1983 and an advisor since 2020. In 2020, Souto Fukui decided to donate five works from the Spring Inten and Reconstructed Art Exhibition to the city of Otaru.

This exhibition will showcase the new world Fukui has arrived at by adding pastels and drawings from his travels in Japan and abroad to the representative works selected by Fukui himself since 2010. It will be an opportunity to enjoy the charm of his works with delicate brush strokes and rich poetic sentiment.

Schedule

Apr 29 (Sat) 2023-Jul 23 (Sun) 2023