Featuring works by:
Emi Otaguro
Masanori Tomita
Nobuya Hitsuda
Yutaka Nozawa
NOBUYA HITSUDA
Born in 1941 in Ota Ward, Tokyo, Nobuya Hitsuda spent his formative years in post-war Tokyo, where the exposed streets bore witness to the city's transformation. Climbing the banks of the Tama River, he marveled at the view of the undeveloped river, shaped by numerous floods. Tokyo's changing landscape during the economic boom left him with a sense of renewal, a theme recurrent in his paintings. Hitsuda's work shows awareness of the Mono-ha and Gutai artists who were active at the same time. He was acquainted with Mono-ha artists like Koji Enokura and Noboru Takayama. His style, involving the placement of motifs on the painting plane and the continuous movement of objects with brushstrokes, echoes the experimental spirit of them. In a manner reminiscent of the Mono-ha movement's endeavor to revitalize Japanese art through installations, Hitsuda revisits the traditional canvas painting, aiming to reshape it into a fresh expression of Japanese artistic form. In addition to these influences, Hitsuda draws inspiration from Japanese and European art across eras, religious paintings, cinema and architecture. His deep fascination with Japanese art is evident in his emphasis on flatness and the use of space, allowing his paintings to continuously expand without a central motif —an acknowledgment of the foundational nature of Japanese paintings. As a respected teacher Hitsuda mentored numerous outstanding Japanese artists, including Yoshitomo Nara and Hiroshi Sugito. Despite his prominence in Japanese museums, he remains relatively unknown outside Japan. His paintings continue to play a crucial role in bridging postwar Japanese painting to contemporary Japanese art.
