Tomio Koyama Gallery Roppongi is pleased to announce an exhibition by Yoshiro Furuhashi, “Trees and Mountains,” opening on March 1.
Yoshiro Furuhashi (1924-2006) was born in Nikko, and spent his entire life painting its scenery. He was born in a Japanese ryokan inn in Nikko, and taught himself to paint. Although he used to paint with oil at one point, he came to discover the potential of watercolor painting, and pursued his own practice in this latter medium until the end of his life.
Furuhashi did not drive. With the exception of a few trips, his subject was the nature found in the mountains of Nikko, which he could reach on foot. While using actual scenery as his motifs, he freely constructed a variety of landscapes in his paintings. This is an approach that is not only visual: it captures the impression of a reality that seems as if it were perceived and understood in an instinctive, firsthand way, allowing viewers to feel the richness of the painting. The appealing forms and fresh colors of the trees and mountains depicted in his paintings have a very contemporary feel to them.
I became aware of Furuhashi’s work when Anne Eastman, an artist who had been staying in Nikko, told me in early January that there was a very interesting exhibition at the Kosugi Hoan Museum of Art in Nikko. After that, we had dinner and talked about Furuhashi’s paintings. Two days later, I went to Nikko to see the exhibition. What greeted my eyes was a body of extremely seductive work that one would never imagine was made more than fifty years ago. Why had I never seen such works of art before? I wanted as many people as possible to see these works, which led to this exhibition.
This exhibition will feature 20 works from his early period up until his later years. It is the first time that his works are being exhibited in Tokyo since his death. We hope you will take this opportunity to enjoy the world of Yoshiro Furuhashi’s paintings.
Anne Eastman penned a text for this Yoshiro Furuhashi exhibition. It is a wonderful essay that discusses Furuhashi’s work with reference to her experiences in the US, the history of American art, and the particular significance to her of Nikko, a place she has visited since she was a child. We hope you enjoy it.
“I would not describe the landscape around Nikko as gentle. Mountain Nantai, the tallest, has large swaths of eroded slopes that point straight down to the town below. Lake Chuzenji is unfathomably deep, spilling out in a tall waterfall that falls dizzying heights, the river below carving through giant boulders. Once every few centuries, there is a terrifying storm that threatens to wash the place away entirely. his power gives the mountains a sacred presence—they are seen as living beings, watching over the generations of people and animals who have lived here.Naturally, it became a place of pilgrimage—people come to Nikko looking for something. Some people are driven far to find where the interesting things are happening. Others recognize that if you stay long enough, something interesting will eventually appear where you are. I realize when I come back again and again to Nikko, I may be doing both of these things at the same time.
My relationship to Nikko is neither as a local or a visitor, but somewhere in between. I came first as a child when my parents bought a house here. I’ve come to learn its ways over decades, in stretches of time coming back to take care of our house, though I never thought of it as a place to come searching for answers or inspiration.
Furuhashi Yoshiro appeared to me this year, when I saw his watercolors of Nikko at the Kosugi Hoan Museum. His washy, wonky, colorful and abstracted landscapes appealed to me. They brought to mind modernist American landscape painters such as Marsden Hartley and Milton Avery, though I guessed he hadn’t looked at them. “ (Anne Eastman)
*Please click here for the full text. Yoshiro Furuhashi Exhibition: Anne Eastman’s essay
Furuhashi Yoshiro_Anne Eastman’s essay
Finally, we would like to thank Yuji Sakouchi-san of the Kosugi Hoan Museum of Art in Nikko and the bereaved family of Furuhashi-san for their generous support.
Tomio Koyama
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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