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Shikō Munakata
was a woodblock printmaker active in Shōwa period Japan. He is associated with the '' sōsaku-hanga'' movement and the ''mingei'' (folk art) movement. Munakata was awarded the "Prize of Excellence" at the Second International Print Exhibition in Lugano, Switzerland in 1952, and first prize at the São Paulo Bienal Exhibition in Brazil in 1955, followed by Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale in 1956, and the Order of Culture, the highest honor in the arts by the Japanese government in 1970. Early life Munakata was born in the city of Aomori in Aomori Prefecture in northern Honshū as the third of 15 children to a local blacksmith. Due to the impoverished circumstances of his family, he had only an elementary school education; however, he exhibited a passion for art from early childhood. In third grade, he began illustrating kites for his classmates. Munakata later claimed that his artistic endeavors were sparked by Vincent van Gogh's (1853–1890) ''Still Life: Vase with Five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aomori, Aomori
is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 278,964 in 136,457 households, and a population density of 340 people per square kilometer spread over the city's total area of . Aomori is one of Japan's 60 core cities and the core of the Aomori metropolitan area. History ''Aomori'' literally means blue forest, although it could possibly be translated as "green forest". The name is generally considered to refer to a small forest on a hill which existed near the town. This forest was often used by fishermen as a landmark. A different theory suggests the name might have been derived from the Ainu language. The area has been settled extensively since prehistoric times, and numerous Jōmon period sites have been found by archaeologists, the most famous being the Sannai-Maruyama Site located just southwest of the city center dating to 5500–4000 BC, and the Komakino Site slightly farther south dating to arou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honshū
, historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separates the Sea of Japan, which lies to its north and west, from the North Pacific Ocean to the south and east. It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian island of Java. Honshu had a population of 104 million , constituting 81.3% of the entire population of Japan, and is mostly concentrated in the coastal areas and plains. Approximately 30% of the total population resides in the Greater Tokyo Area on the Kantō Plain. As the historical center of Japanese cultural and political power, the island includes several past Japanese capitals, including Kyōto, Nara and Kamakura. Much of the island's southern shore forms part of the Taiheiyō Belt, a megalopolis that spans several of the Japanese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yanagi Sōetsu
, also known as Yanagi Muneyoshi, was a Japanese art critic, philosopher, and founder of the ''mingei'' (folk craft) movement in Japan in the late 1920s and 1930s. Personal life Yanagi was born in 1889 to Yanagi Narayoshi, a hydrographer of the Imperial Navy and Katsuko. His son, Sori Yanagi, was a renowned industrial designer. Career In 1916, Yanagi made his first trip to Korea out of curiosity about Korean crafts. The trip led to the establishment of the Korean Folk Crafts Museum in 1924 and the coining of the term ''mingei'' by Yanagi, potters Hamada Shōji (1894–1978) and Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966). His theory of the in Korean art has been said to have influenced the development of the Korean idea of ''han''. Following the March First Movement, Korea's independence movement in which thousands of Koreans died at the hands of the Japanese police and military, Yanagi wrote articles in 1919 and 1920, expressing sympathy for the Korean people and appreciation for Korean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona at the 29th IOC Session on 26 April 1931. The 1936 Games marked the second and most recent time the International Olympic Committee gathered to vote in a city that was bidding to host those Games. Later rule modifications forbade cities hosting the bid vote from being awarded the games. To outdo the 1932 Los Angeles Games, Reich Führer Adolf Hitler had a new 100,000-seat track and field stadium built, as well as six gymnasiums and other smaller arenas. The Games were the first to be televised, with radio broadcasts reaching 41 countries.Rader, Benjamin G. "American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Spo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held during the worldwide Great Depression, with some nations not traveling to Los Angeles; 37 nations competed, compared to the 46 in the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, and then-U.S. President Herbert Hoover did not attend the Games. The organizing committee did not report the financial details of the Games, although contemporary newspapers claimed that the Games had made a profit of US$1,000,000. Host city selection The selection of the host city for the 1932 Summer Olympics was made at the 23rd IOC Session in Rome, Italy, on 9 April 1923. Remarkably, the selection process consisted of a single bid, from Los Angeles, and as there were no bids from any other city, Los Angeles was selected by default to host the 1932 Games. Highlights *Charles Cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wood Carving
Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object. The phrase may also refer to the finished product, from individual sculptures to hand-worked mouldings composing part of a tracery. The making of sculpture in wood has been extremely widely practised, but doesn't survive undamaged as well as the other main materials like stone and bronze, as it is vulnerable to decay, insect damage, and fire. Therefore, it forms an important hidden element in the art history of many cultures. Outdoor wood sculptures do not last long in most parts of the world, so it is still unknown how the totem pole tradition developed. Many of the most important sculptures of China and Japan, in particular, are in wood, and so are the great majority of African sculpture and that of Oceania and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiratsuka Unichi
, born in Matsue, Shimane, was a Japanese woodblock printmaker. He was one of the prominent leaders of the '' sōsaku hanga'' ("creative print") movement in 20th century Japan. Hiratsuka's father was a shrine carpenter, and his grandfather was an architect who designed houses and temples. Therefore, the artist was introduced to wood-working and architecture early in his life. Hiratsuka was the best–trained woodcarver in the ''sōsaku hanga'' movement. From 1928 onwards he taught the renowned ''sōsaku hanga'' artist Shikō Munakata (1903–1975) wood carving. The same year he joined with seven other like-minded artists to work on the '' 100 Views of New Tokyo'' series, to which he contributed twelve prints; his prints were lauded for their "technical beauty and perfection." Between 1935 and 1944 Hiratsuka taught the first blockprinting course at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1962 and spent thirty three years in the United States. While living ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kawakami Sumio
Chosei Kawakami (10 April 1895 – 1 September 1972) was a Japanese painter and print maker. He is better known as Sumio Kawakami (). His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics. Biography Kawakami was born in Yokohama, but his family moved to Tokyo when he was three. He learned to draw from Shôdai Tameshige (1863-1951) at the Aoyama Junior High School ( Aoyama Gakuin Chûtôbu). He made his first print in 1912: and adaptation of a frontispiece drawn by the playwright Mokutarô Kinoshita (木下杢太郎 1885-1945) for a play called "Izumiya Dyeing Shop" (Izumiya somemono-ten: 和泉屋染物店). He was quite inventive: To make his print — a woman with a traditional chignon hair-style who peers out from underneath a Western umbrella — Kawakami used a sharpened umbrella stay to carve the block. Moreover, he printed the inked block with a makeshift rubbing tool — an ashtray wrapped in a handkerchief. He started to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oil Painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser colour, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied. The oldest known oil paintings were created by Buddhist artists in Afghanistan and date back to the 7th century AD. The technique of binding pigments in oil was later brought to Europe in the 15th century, about 900 years later. The adoption of oil paint by Europeans began with Early Netherlandish painting in Northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance, oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced the use of tempera paints in the majority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan Art Academy
is the highest-ranking official artistic organization in Japan. It is established as an extraordinary organ of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, Bunkacho) in the thirty-first article of the law establishing the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The Academy discusses art-related issues, advises the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on art-related issues, and promotes arts in three categories: 1) fine art, 2) literary arts, 3) music, drama, and dance. It is closely associated with the annual Japan Art Academy Exhibition ''(Nitten''), the premier art exhibition in Japan; the Japan Art Academy originally ran the Nitten but since 1958 the exhibition is run by a separate private institution. The Japan Art Academy headquarters is in Ueno Park, Tokyo. The Japan Art Academy should not be confused with the Japan Art Institute, which is a completely different organization. History The Japan Art Academy was foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bunten
The is a Japanese art exhibition established in 1907. The exhibition consists of five art faculties: Japanese Style and Western Style Painting, Sculpture, Craft as Art, and Sho (calligraphy). During each exhibition, works of the great masters are shown alongside works of new but talented artists. It claims to be the largest combined art exhibition of its kind in the world and the most popular in Japan. Bunten In 1907, under the supervision of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, then called Mombushō (文部省), the first state art exhibition took place, the Monbushō Bijtsu Tenrankai (文部省 美術展 覧 会), abbreviated to "bunten" (文 展). It was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (東京都美術館, Tōkyō-to Bijutsukan.)It had the three faculties: Japanese Style Painting, Western Style Painting and Sculpture. Works were approved after being examined by a jury. The series of exhibitions took place twelve times under this name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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