福沢一郎

Born in Tomioka-machi, Kitakanra-gun, Gunma-ken (the present Tomioka-shi) on January 18, 1898. After finishing Gunma Prefectural Tomioka Junior High School, he went on to the English Law Course at the Second Higher School in Sendai, where he studied under Tobari Chikufū and other professors, and aspired to become an artist. In 1918, he entered the Faculty of Letters at Tokyo Imperial University. However, he began attending Asakura Fumio’s private sculpture school from the same year and devoted himself to producing plastic arts. He submitted “Suikan (Drunkard)” (whereabouts unknown) to the Sculpture Section of the 4th Teiten (Imperial Fine Arts Academy Exhibition) in 1922, and it was accepted. In May 1924, Fukuzawa went to study sculpture in France and lived in Paris until around April 1931. During this time, he associated with Moriguchi Tari, Saeki Yūzō, Kinouchi Yoshi, Nakayama Takashi, and others, and traveled around France and neighboring countries visiting ruins, cathedrals and other architectural sites, and museums. He submitted paintings and sculptures to the Salon d’Automne, but there is no record of him having frequented art schools or private art classes. There are signs of his work having shifted from mainly sculpture to painting from c. 1927. The oldest works by Fukuzawa remaining to this day including “Women Dressed Up” (Tomioka City Museum / Fukuzawa Ichirō Memorial Gallery) are considered to have been produced in 1927. “Saint-Malo Station” (1929, private collection) was influenced by works by Giorgio de Chirico, showing that his interest in avant-garde art had grown. There was a special display of ten paintings by Fukuzawa at the 16th Nika Art Exhibition held in 1929. In 1930, Fukuzawa produced many paintings such as “Poisson d’avril (April Fool)” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) and “Science Blinding Beauty” (The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), in which he combined science magazine illustrations, print reproductions of master paintings, etc. These works were strongly influenced by “La femme 100 têtes” by Max Ernst. It has been revealed that Fukuzawa traced the collaged images back to their sources in an effort to consider the intent of Ernst’s production, and utilized his findings in his own work. Thirty-seven of such paintings by Fukuzawa were presented as a special display at the 1st Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai (Independent Art Society) Exhibition held in January 1931. Fukuzawa returned to Japan in June 1931, and thereafter showed a strong presence as a member of Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai. His works during the 1930s had distinct themes, and many of them placed emphasis on powerfully depicting the theme in line with the period. Some such as “Imonbukuro ni bijinga o ireyo (Put pictures of beauties in the comfort bags)” (1932, whereabouts unknown) contained marked social satire, and others such as “Oxen” (1936, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) revealed apprehension about a period of human crisis. He also contributed energetically to magazines and newspapers, and published books, “Sur Réalisme” (Atoriesha) in 1937 and “Ernst” (Atoriesha) in 1939. Consequently, he became acknowledged as a theoretical leader of avant-garde painting. In October 1936, he founded Fukuzawa Kaiga Kenkyūjo (Fukuzawa Art Institute) and endeavored to rear young artists too. In April 1939, Fukuzawa withdrew from Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyōkai and formed Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai (Bijutsu Bunka Art Association) together with young artists in sympathy with Surrealist painting. He was active as a key figure of that association, but following the Special Higher Police’s judgment that Surrealism led to Communism, in April 1941, he was arrested and detained on suspicion of violation of the Peace Preservation Law. After being released in November that year, he was obliged to comply with national policy and produced war record paintings such as “Seaborne Special Unit Leaves the Base” (1945, on indefinite loan from the USA to The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Fukuzawa evacuated to Karuizawa (Nagano) from the beginning of 1945, and World War II came to an end while he was there. In December that year, he held a solo exhibition of works he had produced in Europe in the 1930s, which had once been talked about. This is considered to have been a denunciation of wartime oppression by the authorities. The following year, in 1946, inspired by Dante’s “The Divine Comedy: Inferno,” he presented a series of works portraying nudes wriggling on earth. He also worked energetically on reconstructing Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai and on establishing various artist groups. “Group of Figures Defeated in Battle” (1948, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma) is regarded as the most important work he produced immediately after the war. In 1949, Fukuzawa withdrew from Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai. In May 1952, he went to France to take part in a cultural event, “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century,” organized by the Conference on Cultural Freedom as one of its representatives. The following year, in January 1953, he went from France to Brazil, and continued traveling around Central and South America eagerly doing research on the local scenes and the people’s lifestyles until May 1954. After returning to Japan, he presented the fruit of this journey in solo exhibitions and public exhibitions in which he was invited to take part. These works employing vivid colors and powerful contours were highly acclaimed. In 1957, Fukuzawa was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize. In May that year, he submitted “Burial” (1957, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) to the 4th Nihon Kokusai Bijutsuten (International Art Exhibition Japan) and won the top prize in the Japanese Section. In 1958, Fukuzawa traveled to Europe as vice representative of the 6th Venice Biennale together with the representative, Takiguchi Shūzō. He presented “Oxen” (1936), “People in the Forest” (1955, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), “Burial,” and other works there. While in Europe, he also got absorbed in his hobby of photography and took many pictures of walls of buildings. As a result, the following year, in 1959, he produced many works in which plaster, wooden boards, sand, etc. were applied to his paintings. Overlapping with the aftermath of the “Art Informel sensation” in Japan, some critics criticized Fukuzawa for following the current of the times. After that, he also worked hard on large works such as the “Black Fantasy” series (1959–1962) applying decalcomania, “Negro Spirituals” (1962, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), and “Celebration” (1963, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma) in search of means of expression. In 1965, he went to New York, where he spent five months doing research on the life of people living in Harlem and civil rights demonstrations. This resulted in many works including “Voting” and “Demonstration” (both 1965, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma). Around that time, he is said to have come across acrylic paint, and used it exclusively in his works from then on. It was also from around this time that he began teaching at Tama Art University and Joshibi Art University, and devoted himself to rearing the next generation. From 1970 onward, Fukuzawa produced works treating a variety of myths and legends as his subjects. Particularly rich in both quality and quantity are series such as “Pan and Nymphs” and “Bacchae” (both 1970, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), which were inspired by Greek mythology; “Dante Entering the Dark Wood” and “The Dead Caught in Ice” (both1971, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), which depict scenes from Dante’s “The Divine Comedy: Inferno;” “Hungry Ghosts” and “Inferno of Burning Stones” (both 1972, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art) taken from Genshin’s “Ōjōyōshū;” “Toilet Paper Hell” (1974, The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma), which satirizes modern times by likening it to hell; and “Himiko Enters the Palace” (1980, Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo) and “Rebellion in Wa (Japan)” (1980, Tama Art University, Tokyo). “Noah’s Ark” from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament was a subject that Fukuzawa employed for many years from the 1960s to his final years. Also noteworthy are his 1978 series depicting bullfighting and his 1982–1984 series quoting images from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Codex Atlanticus.” Fukuzawa was designated as a Person of Cultural Merit in 1978 and was awarded the Order of Culture in 1991. He died on October 16, 1992. Fukuzawa’s work changed at a bewildering pace until the 1970s, and one gets an elusive impression at first sight. However, his distinctive character lies in the way he quoted existing images, arranged such images as unwavering compositions, and depicted forcibly with an overflowing sense of volume. Regarding his quotation of images, not only in the 1930s but also in examples dating from the 1970s, there are traces of quotations from Gustave Doré’s prints of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy: Inferno” and illustrations in eighteenth-century medical books, on which further research is awaited. It should also be noted that he continuously portrayed the human being living foolishly yet vigorously with both criticism and affection. “Will Evil Voltage Rise in the 21st Century?” (1986, Tomioka City Museum / Fukuzawa Ichiro Memorial Gallery) is one of the most important examples of this tendency, and it has been evoking response from many people as a warning to the new century. (Itō Yoshiyuki / Translated by Ogawa Kikuko) (Published online: 2024-09-03)