Migishi Kōtarō (Japanese:三岸好太郎; 18 April 1903,

Sapporo ( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...

- 1 July 1934,

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...

) was a Japanese painter in the

yōga is a style of artistic painting in Japan, typically of Japanese subjects, themes, or landscapes, but using Western (European) artistic conventions, techniques, and materials. The term was coined in the Meiji period (1868–1912) to distingu ...

style.

Life and work

While attending the middle schools in Sapporo, he became interested in oil painting and took lessons from , who worked for the local school system. When he completed his primary studies in 1920, he went to Tokyo, where he saw paintings by Cézanne and

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...

at an exhibition sponsored by the

Shirakaba-ha The was an influential Japanese literary coterie, which published the literary magazine ''Shirakaba'', from 1910 to 1923. History In 1910, a loose association of alumni of the prestigious Gakushuin Peer’s School in Tokyo began a literary soc ...

, a prominent literary association. In 1921, he was able to show some paintings at the third "Central Art Exhibition" (中央美術展). Two years later, he had his second showing, with the (Spring Meeting), a group devoted to promoting Western-style art. The following year, he exhibited there again and was awarded First Prize. Soon after he, Yokobori Kakujirō (1897–1978), a friend from the Shun’yō-kai, and others put together their own exhibition. Later that year, he married the painter, Yoshida Setsuko. In 1928 he, his wife and a friend, , organized their own exhibition. The following year, he became one of the founding members of the . He would exhibit with them annually for the remainder of his life. After 1932, he was increasingly influenced by modern French art; showing some of his works at an avant-garde exhibition in Paris, as well as at the Progressive Art Alliance in Tokyo. He combined ideas from

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

with

Fauvism Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

, then switched to

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. In 1934 he published, at his own expense, a long narrative poem called "Butterflies and Shells" (蝶と貝殻), with illustrations. That same year, while travelling in Nagoya, he died unexpectedly, from a bleeding stomach ulcer. His home prefecture dedicated his estate to establishing a museum in Sapporo, called the ".

Selected paintings

MigishiKōtarō-1932-Nude Standing Posture.png, Nude-Standing Posture MigsihiKōtarō-1934-Butterflies Flying above Clouds.png, Butterflies Above the Clouds File:MigishiKōtarō-1933-Orchestra-1.png, Orchestra MigishiKōtarō-1924-Elder Brother and his Eldest Daughter.png, Elder Brother and Eldest Daughter MigishiKōtarō-1934-Loneliness on Journey.png, Loneliness on a Journey File:MigishiKōtarō-1931-A Cat.png, A Cat

Sources

* Japan Foundation: "Migishi". In: ' (exhibition catalog), Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, 1985 * Tazawa, Yutaka: "Migishi Kōtarō". In: ''Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art''. Kodansha International, 1981. .

External links

Migishi Kotaro Museum of Art, Hokkaido
@ Welcome Sapporo
More works by Migishi
@ ArtNet {{Authority control 1903 births 1934 deaths Japanese painters Yōga painters Deaths from ulcers Artists from Hokkaido