It is said that after the war figurative sculpture in Japan reached a peak under Shin Hongo, Yoshitatsu Yanagihara, Churyo Sato and Yasutake Funakoshi. This can be taken to mean that modern sculpture in Japan, which was originated by Morie Ogiwara and Kotaro Takamura, both of whom were influenced by Rodin, matured and reached a stage of completion under these four artists. Opposing the academicism which could be seen thus far in government-sponsored exhibitions, Yasutake finakoshi, belonging to the trend which was called the genealogy of "lifeism," occupied his won unique position within that trend.
As displayed by Funakoshi's work, including "The 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki," "Hara-no-Jo," "Damian of Molokai Island," numerous figures of the women saints, "Sakutaro Hagiwara," "Young Takuboku Ishikawa" and his "Fish" series through his revered Catholic faith, his lucid poetic feeling and his strong spirit for creating sclupture, he has produced a large number of excellent works of art of high level of purity. He is recognized as the first artist in Japan to genuinely sculpt in marble, and he is also known for excelling even sculpting in sandstone, having produced excellent work as a pioneer in a new field of sculpture.
In this exhibition we are attempting to retrace the tracks of sixty years of Funakoshi's work, which ranges form "Mr. N"(1933), which is his earliest existing work, to "Study-IV," and which consists fo 81 pieces of sculpture and 56 rough sketches, and to discober the world of Yasutake Funakoshi's art.

Quoted from the Catalog

20/Aug/94-8/Sep/94
Iwate Prefectural Hall
Exhibits: 80 sculptures and 56 drawings of Funakoshi

Tetsugoro Yorozu(1885-1927) is best known for his Nude Beauty(1912) created under the influence of van Gogh and Matisse, and Leaning Woman(1917) which demonstrates his pioneer attempt at incorporating the Cubist approach to form. In the Taisho period(1912-26) ehen many distinctive artists came out, Yorozu was a quite isolated figure, vigorously adopting modern Western trends on one hand, and trying to create works stemming fromthe nature of his dwelling places on the other.
Impressed by the contemporary European art trends, Yorozu became a founder-member of the Fyuzankai(Fusain Society) at the turn from the Meiji period(1868-1912) to the Taisho period.Fyuzankai was a group fo artists who was against the prevalence of the plein-air exptression as the norm. In the flood of the Post-Impressionist influence, however, Yorozu soon began to feel out of place among the emotional self-expression of his colleagues, and in 1914 went bac to Tsuchizawa, IwatePrefecture, his hometown, to dig sown into his own self through exploratioin into form guided by Cubist principles. As strongly exemplified in his Leaning Woman, Yorozu's penetratingly subjective expression from this period attained something suggestive of breathing of nature, shaking the fundamentals of conventional paintings by distorted space. After 1919 when Yorozu moved to Chigasaki, the artist developed an interest in Nanga(Japanese literati painting) inspired by the caostal scenery of the village. HIs works began to take on the air of spiritual peinness attained by his continued introspection into his own self.
Yorozu's art may seem to have followed the similar course as sisi the Japanese art in the Taisho period, that is, from the acceptance of the Western avant-garde to the return to the Japanese tradition. As recent detailed and multifaceted researches have revealed, however, Yorozu's "isolation" suggests the existence of a certain driving force which gave the art of the Taisho period new expressive power, something the art of the Meiji period did not have. Thus Yorozu's art may afford the key to the critical reexamination fo not just the art of the Taisho period but modern Japanese art in general. Commemorating the seventieth anniversary of Yorozu's death, this exhibition is intended to provide an overview of the artinst's career, and to examine what Ei-Kyu, a younger abstract painter, described as Yorozu's "power of unsolveness".

Quoted from the catalog

11/July/97-24/Aug/97
Iwate Prefectural Museum
Exhibits:240 paintings and drawings of Yorozu

Half a century has passed since Shunsuke Matsumoto died in 1948 at the young age of 36.His intricate and richly lyric paintings are loved by many, and his works are also frequently discussed in relation to the fact that they were created against the severe backdrop of the World War II and immediate post-war years. This exhibition, held in the 50th year since Shunsuke's youthful and vivacious painterly world.
Shunsuke was born in 1912 in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, but then moved at an early age to Iwate prefecture when his father's work took the family to this northern Japanese district. Shunsuke lost his hearing due to illness during his first year in middle school and this became one of the factors in his decision to became a painter. He moved to Tokyo in 1929 and there set out to find his own painterly world. Shunsuke began to depict his own unique vision of the urban landscape in 1935, and his montage-like "Cityscape" series with its images of the city and the people living in the metropolis was begun in 1938. These "Cityscape" works emanate a strikingly fresh and lyric translucency.
In 1941, Shunsuke began to create landscape from specific elements of the city - whether bridges or the Nikolai Cathedral in Tokyo's Kanda district - and gradually these images developed into a group of tranquil works whose purity of form renders them more landscapes of the heart than images of the urban scene. Indeed, they seem to reveal Shunsuke's own psyche as he continued to honestly face himself, his own being, in the midst of this difficult age. We can also see this attitude in a group of self-portraits and figural compositions created during this same period. Shunsuke exhibited a major stylistic change in his few post-war years and the meaning and process of this trasformation also deserve carerful consideration.
This exhibition arranges a carefull selected group of Shunsuke's works - 92 oil paintings and 45 drawings - to reveal transformations in the artist's painting style and allow a consideration of the meaning of his work from numerous viewpoints. All of these pictures filled with his joy in the painterly process evoke a sense of Shunsuke's faith in the painting and his deep love for the human condition. It is our dearest hope that this exhibition will bring about a new response to and appreciation of Shunsuke Mastsumoto and his arts.

Quoted from the catalog

4/Dec/98-25/Dec/98
Iwate Prefectural Hall
Exhibits: oils paintings and 45 drawings of Matsumoto

In 2001 the Iwate Museum of Art will open in Morioka City. For those people who would like to see what kind of works we have, who have never been to an art museum before, or those who would have to travel far to reach Morioka, we have an early exhibition, a public opening of some of the works in our collection at three locations around the prefecture. The theme of the exhibitions is "The Mystery and Allure of the Form". In these exhibitions you will not find beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers, the kinds of works you think of when you hear the word "art". Instead, we have gathered a collection of 30 unique works, in styles which you may not be used to seeing. Please enjoy these work created in a world of free expressions, a world uninhibited and unlimited by the forms which the human eyes see in the physical world.

From the Exhibition Brochure

Exhibits: works of 12 artists (Yorozu, Matsumoto, Funakoshi and others) selected from the museum collection
Kuji Venue
16/Oct/99-24/Oct/99
Kuji Amber Hall
Ofunato Venue
13/Nov/99-21/Nov/99
Ofunato City Museum
Ichinoseki Venue
27/Nov/99-5/Dec/99
Ichinoseki City Museum