福島秀子FUKUSHIMA Hideko

Fukushima Hideko was born on February 7, 1927, in Akasaka-ku, Tokyo Prefecture (present-day Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo), the eldest daughter of Fukushima Tsuru (Chieko). Her father, Mori Tsutomu (1883–1932), was a politician who had previously held a position in the Mitsui conglomerate. While her birth name was Aiko, she used the nickname Hideko from childhood. Hideko had two older brothers and a younger brother, Kazuo (b. 1930), who later became a composer and joined the collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop). From a young age she learned Japanese traditional dance under Azuma Tokuho I, and after graduating elementary school, she enrolled at Bunka Gakuin in 1939 and was inspired by the school’s emphasis on the arts. She graduated when the school closed in 1943. During World War II, she experienced air raids in Tokyo and evacuated to Fukui Prefecture and elsewhere with her mother and younger brother, returning to Tokyo after the war’s end. She was married from 1950 to 1963 to Sakae Hayashi, an American citizen of Japanese descent who worked in a US military-related capacity in Japan. However, they were estranged from the mid-1950s onward. In July 1948 Fukushima participated in the Modern Art Summer Seminar at her alma mater Bunka Gakuin, marking a significant turning point as she embarked on her career as an artist. The seminar was organized by the Japan Avant-Garde Artists Club, which included such notable figures as Uemura Takachiyo, Egawa Kazuhiko, Takiguchi Shūzō, and Abe Nobuya. Kitadai Shōzō and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, who would later co-found Jikken Kōbō, also attended as students. After the workshop, Fukushima, along with Kitadai, Yamaguchi, Yanagida Miyoko, and Nishijima Hiroshi, formed the group Toridan (Trident) (later renamed Shichiyōkai). In 1949 she also took part in the activities of the painting division of the Century Society (Seiki no Kai), and after the society disbanded, she joined Ikeda Tatsuo, Kitadai, and Yamaguchi in establishing the Pouvoir Society. Many of Fukushima’s paintings from this period depict human figures rendered in planes of color demarcated by thick, dark lines, reflecting the influence of Abe, Okamoto Taro, and Bunka Gakuin teacher Murai Masanari. She was close to Abe, visiting his studio for advice and exhibiting her works at the Bijutsu Bunka (Art and Culture) Association, to which Abe belonged, from 1950 to 1952. Fukushima also met Enomoto Kazuko (b. 1930) through the Bijutsu Bunka Association, and the two became lifelong friends. Fukushima modeled at Abe’s studio for “Aru Bijutsuka no Shōzō” (Portrait of the Artist) (1950, in collections including the Chiba City Museum of Art), a breakthrough work for the photographer Ōtsuji Kiyoji, with the set designed by Abe. Ōtsuji too later joined Jikken Kōbō. The influences of these older artists, along with mutual influence among peers such as Kitadai and Yamaguchi, are prominently visible in Fukushima’s early works. Fukushima’s younger brother Kazuo aspired to a career in music, which led to a deepening relationship with emerging composers including Takemitsu Tōru, Suzuki Hiroyoshi, and Akiyama Kuniharu, who was serving to provide commentary at the CIE Library organized by occupying Allied forces In 1951, after being named Jikken Kōbō by the influential critic Takiguchi Shūzō, the group’s activities commenced with the ballet “Joie de Vivre” at the Picasso Festival. The only female member of Jikken Kōbō, Fukushima did not limit herself to painting but applied her diverse talents to stage art, costumes, and poetry in the context of the group’s wide-ranging activities including concerts, exhibitions, ballet, and collaborative performance pieces with Noh creators. She contributed to the poetry and slide composition of the autoslide (automatic slide projection with audio accompaniment) “Making Foam” (Minawa wa tsukurareru) (1953), for which her brother Kazuo produced the music. Prominent examples of Fukushima’s collaborative projects are the ballet “The Beggar Prince” (1955), for which she was in charge of set design and worked with Kawaji Akira and Matsuo Akemi, and the masquerade “Pierrot Lunaire” (1955), directed by Takechi Tetsuji and featuring Kanze Hisao and Nomura Mansaku, for which she did costume design. Fukushima went on to work with Kanze Hisao on stage productions after “Pierrot Lunaire”, and from 1964 to 1968 they were married and influenced each other’s works. Around 1955 Fukushima established her own unique style, applying a technique of embossed circles and lines to the creation of paintings. She used readily available items for embossing, including empty cans, bones, sponges, and rubber from furniture legs. Notable works employing this technique include “Akai Kaze no Hannō” (The Reaction of the Red Wind) (1955, Chiba City Museum of Art), “Rekizentaru Kiga” (Brilliant Starvation) (1956, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, formerly owned by Takiguchi), and “Sasagemono” (An Offering) (1957, The Ishii Collection, University of Tsukuba). Fukushima employed this embossing technique, with variations, until the 1970s, conveying a distinctive temporality and spontaneity by pressing rather than painting on the canvas. This sense of the instantaneous in her painting was undoubtedly influenced by her experience in creating autoslide works. Her work caught the eye of the art critic Michel Tapié, a champion of Art Informel who visited Japan while “Two-Person Show: Enomoto Kazuko and Fukushima Hideko” (Yōseido Gallery, Tokyo, Ginza, 1957), featuring “An Offering” and other works, was on view. This led to her work’s inclusion in “International Art of a New Era: Informel and Gutai” (Takashimaya Department Store, Osaka, 1957) and the 11th Premio Lissone in Italy (1959). By the late 1950s, in addition to her embossing technique Fukushima began to develop a more fluid style of painting by propping up the canvas and letting paint flow over it. She traveled to Europe to participate in the Biennale de Paris, staying in Europe and traveling to various locations for about one year and four months from September 1961 to December 1962. After returning to Japan she presented “Ko” (Arc), a series of monochromatic dark brown paintings, at Minami Gallery (Tokyo) in May 1963, and the following year began working with new materials, pouring wax on glass fiber. In the 1970s Fukushima completely changed her style, introducing the “Ao” (Blue) series featuring fluid, blue images, and collages made with paraffin wax. In the mid-1980s, she began work on the “Gogatsu no Shindō” (Vibration of May) series. Starting in the late 1960s and especially from the 1980 onward, Fukushima often suspended her creative activities, presumably owing to personal matters such as her health. She was an active member of the postwar avant-garde and played a significant role in Jikken Kōbō, the group of young artists Takiguchi Shūzō discovered. Fukushima left a mark on art history as the creator of many interdisciplinary works in the 1950s, and is also notable as a female member of the postwar generation of painters who rapidly gained prominence in Japan and abroad in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1991, Fukushima suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage and was convalescent into the next year. She died of lung cancer in a Tokyo hospital in 1997. (Nishizawa Harumi / Translated by Christopher Stephens) (Published online: 2024-03-06)