加山又造

Born in Kyoto in 1927. His father made a living as a Nishijin-ori costume designer and was particularly renowned as a designer of luxurious obi. Kayama breathed the air in the workshop from a young age and is said to have looked tirelessly through the design and painting books his father had collected at work. In 1940, he entered the painting course at Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. Upon completion, he then went on to the nihonga (Japanese-style painting) department at Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Fine Arts School, present-day Tokyo University of the Arts), but the wartime mobilization of students for military service made it impossible to study. After World War II and his father’s death from a disease in January 1946, Kayama returned to the art school. In order to earn his tuition fees and send money home, he experienced more than twenty different part-time jobs such as producing posters. In 1949, he graduated from Tokyo Fine Arts School and became a pupil of Yamamoto Kyūjin. As Yamamoto Kyūjin was a founding member of Sōzō Bijutsu (the predecessor of the present SŌGA-kai Association of Japanese Painting), which was established in January 1948 with the aim of “creating nihonga based on a global view,” Kayama began to attend its study meetings. In 1950, “Self-Portrait” (private collection) and “Zoo” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) won the Study Group Award at the Spring Sōzō Bijutsu Exhibition, which marked his debut in the art circles. In 1951, Sōzō Bijutsu merged with Shinseisakuha Kyōkai and became Shinseisaku Art Society Japanese-Style Painting Section. At this group’s exhibitions, Kayama presented a series of works treating animals as his motifs. Inspired by the Lascaux cave paintings featured in the American “Life” magazine in 1950, he produced “Primeval Age” (1951, Tokyo University of the Arts), which won the New Artist Award, and Kayama was raised to a fellow. Then, from 1953 to 1955, he won the New Artist Award in succession and became a full member in 1956. Of these animal paintings, “Moon and Zebra” (1954, private collection) adopts Cubist analysis of forms and Futurist representation of time. By overlaying multiple images, the movement of the zebra drinking water is captured in a visionary manner. In “Pathetic Deer” (1954, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), the background is filled with striped color fields, making the planarity and decorativeness stand out. Through such attempts, Kayama was to attract significant attention as a nihonga artist taking on an innovative trend. “Pathetic Deer” already reveals a stylishness, in which everything seems to be turned into a pattern, and a planarity with no blank spaces. In 1958, Kayama studied under Agata Jirō, a master of the “kirikane” technique, and learned thin gold- or silver-leaf decorative techniques. Thereafter, he moved away from animal paintings and, following Muromachi-period and old Rinpa paintings, worked on decorative folding-screen paintings, which employed craftlike techniques such as stencils and “kirikane.” Representative examples would be “Shunjū Hatō” (Waves in Spring and Autumn) (1966, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) and “Setsugetsuka” (Snow, Moon and Cherry Blossoms) (1967, private collection), which were inspired by “Jitsugetsu Shiki Sansuizu” (The sun, moon, and four seasons), a pair of folding screens in Kongōji, a temple in Osaka; and “Amanogawa” (The Milky Way) (1968, private collection), and “A Thousand Cranes” (1970, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), which were painted with Rinpa in mind. Compared to the old paintings Kayama referred to as his models, as Kayama’s works are thoroughly stylized and flattened, they bring about a refreshing feeling void of emotion. That is where the characteristic of Kayama as a person of the present day lies. In 1973, he was awarded the 5th Nihon Geijutsu Taishō for the diverse potentials he demonstrated in the production of folding screens. In 1978, he completed the trilogy, “Snow,” “Moon,” and “Flowers,” for the stairwell at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. It was around this time that his reputation as “gendai no Rinpa” (modern Rinpa) took hold, and he won widespread popularity. Meanwhile, from 1972, Kayama also presented a series of female nudes and worked on the issue of lines in Japanese painting. After presenting numerous sumi ink paintings at a solo exhibition held in 1978, he undertook sumi ink painting, which he had been experimenting with from before, on a full scale. In order to achieve a beautiful black color, he used Ming ink, and in addition to the time-honored “tarashikomi” (dripping) technique, employed new equipment such as an airbrush or sprayer. A representative example of his ink paintings produced by such means is “Gekkō Hatō” (Waves in Moonlight) (1979, private collection), for which Kayama was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize in 1980. After visiting China for the first time in 1975, Kayama traveled time and again to China. In 1982, he made a trip to Huangshan. In 1992, he became an executive director of the Japan-China Cultural Exchange Association. He also frequented the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Having studied both fine examples of sumi ink paintings and the land where such paintings were produced, for fifteen or so years late in life, with Northern Song ink landscapes as his models, he created one after another work including “Snowy Landscape in the Northern Song Manner” (1989, Tama Art University Museum) and “Deep Mountains, Frozen Woods in the Northern Song Manner” (1998, Tokyo University of the Arts). From the 1960s onward, when Kayama was working on decorative folding screens, he also undertook various decorative tasks other than painting with enthusiasm. They ranged widely from decorating ceramics or designing Western tableware, kimono, folding and round fans, and jewelry to painting designs for a theater curtain, ceramic murals, the walls of Japan Airlines’ Boeing 747LR (1968), the tapestry for a Gion-Festival “yamahoko” (float) (1988), a BMW art car (1990), etc. Such decorative work applying the methodology he developed in his decorative folding screens gradually came to occupy a significant position amid Kayama’s creative activities. After presenting some examples for the first time at a solo exhibition held in 1978, he included them in retrospectives and also held a number of exhibitions of decorated ceramics only or works produced in collaboration with ceramists. Kayama’s thoughts on multidisciplinary creations are elucidated in writings such as “Watashi ga omou ‘nihongaka’” (My idea of a Japanese-style painter) (“Geijutsu shinchō” 338, February 1978). From 1966 to 1973 and again from 1977 to 1988, Kayama served as professor at Tama Art University. From 1988 to 1995, he was professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1997, he was designated as a Person of Cultural Merit. From the 1990s onward, while working hard on retrospectives held in Japan and abroad, from around 1998, he attempted painting with a computer and constantly continued challenges in new fields. In 2003, he was awarded the Order of Culture. The following year, on April 6, he died of pneumonia aged seventy-six. “A Thousand Cranes” and many other works remaining in the artist’s possession were donated to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2004. In 2005, a society named Kayama Matazō Kenkyūkai (research projects) was established at Tama Art University, where research is being undertaken based on works and reference materials donated by the heirs. (Tsurumi Kaori / Translated by Ogawa Kikuko) (Published online: 2024-05-15)