Higashiyama, Kai

Born in Yokohama in the family of Kosuke and Higashiyama Kai. At birth, he received the name Shinkichi, but later changed it to Kaya. From three to 18 years old he lived in Kobe, where he studied at a secondary school (currently a secondary school in Hyogo Prefecture ).

In 1921 he entered the nihong department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts , which he graduated with honors in 1931 and entered the school’s research department, where he studied for two years under the guidance of Somei Yuki ^[5] . In 1933 he went to Europe on a cargo ship, where he began to study the history of Western art at the University of Berlin (1933 - 1935). At this time, took part in an art competition during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin ^[7] .

On November 21, 1940, he married Sumi Kawasaki, the eldest daughter of artist Sumi Kawasaki, and moved to Saginomia in Tokyo. In July 1945 he was drafted into the army, underwent anti-tank training and was demobilized that same year.

In 1947, he received a special prize at the largest art exhibition at the Japanese Academy of Arts (Nitten). This contributed to the development of his own style, based on the opposition and contemplation of nature ^[8] . In 1950, he presented the painting “The Road” at Nitten's 6th exhibition, where his sympathetic and simplistic attitude to the subject was well received by the world of art and the public ^{[5] [9]} . In 1950, after the death of his mother, he moved to Ichikawa, Chiba . ^[ten]

He visited the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria and China and wrote many works on the themes of landscapes of these countries. On January 12, 1985, together with Andy Warhol and Joseph Boyce, he took part in the Global-Art-Fusion project. It was a fax art project initiated by conceptual artist Uli Fuchser, in which a fax with drawings of all three artists was sent within 32 minutes around the world - from Dusseldorf (Germany) via New York (USA) to Tokyo (Japan) and the Vienna Museum of Modern Art Palais-Lichtenstein. The significance of this project was in the call for peace during the Cold War in the 1980s. ^[eleven]

Painting

In 1953, he was chosen to paint 27 fusuma for a Japanese house called Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens, which was built in Nagoya in 1953 for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Higashiyama, who was a classmate of architect Junzo Yoshimura, was selected among other famous Japanese artists such as Maeda Sayson and Yokoyama Taikan to create mountain scenes using black ink on fusuma and in tokonom niches. Shofuso was moved to Philadelphia in 1958, where murals were exhibited until 1974, the code was destroyed by vandals.

In 1960, he created a large painting called “The Sun, the Moon and the Four Seasons” for the state dining room of the Togu Palace ^[5] . In 1968, the painting “The Tide at Dawn” ( Asaake no Ushio ) appeared, which is part of the Nami-no-ma Hall of the Tokyo Imperial Palace ^[12] . This large picture is apparently modeled on rock stones from Umi Island in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The dimensions of the painting are about 3.8 meters in height and about 14.3 meters in length.

In 1975 and 1980, he also created several Japanese and Chinese landscapes for the Tosedai-ji Temple .

• 1950 Appointed as a jury member at Nitten. ^[five]
• 1956 Received the Academy of Fine Arts of Japan Award for Twilight.
• 1965 Appointed as a member of the Japan Academy of Arts and accepted as director of the Shin-Nitten exhibition. ^[five]
• 1968 Appointed as a member of the Committee of Specialists of the Council for the Protection of Foreign Values. ^[five]
• 1969 Awarded the Mainichi Prize for Tide at Dawn.
• 1969 Awarded the Order of Culture and noted as a cultural figure. ^{[4] [5] [13]}
• 1974 He became chairman of the board at Kaiso Nitten.
• 1975 By order of the emperor painted "Spring Dawn" as a state gift to Queen Elizabeth II . ^[five]
• 1984 Elected as a member of the Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste Germany.
• 1992 Awarded the UNESCO Picasso Gold Medal.
• 1990 Higashiyama Kaiya Gallery was opened in Nagano Prefecture at the Shinano Museum of Art. ^{[13] [14]}
• 1994 Opening of Higashiyama Kaii Art Gallery at the Ichikawa City Life Study Center. ^[13]
• 2005 The Higashiyama Kai Art Museum is opened in Kagawa Prefecture. ^[15]

• Yasushi Sugiyama
• Togu Okumura
• Maeda Sayson
• List of Nihong Artists

• Kaii Higashiyama: A retrospective (neopr.) . Nikkei inc .. Date accessed July 1, 2008. Archived August 8, 2008.
• Kaii Higashiyama- The Japanese master (neopr.) . James Tan Gallery. Date of treatment July 1, 2008. Archived on August 19, 2008.
• Kaii Higashiyama biography (neopr.) . Higashiyama Kaii Setouchi Museum. Date of treatment July 1, 2008. Archived June 17, 2008.
• The collected works of Kaii Higashiyama. - Shorewood Fine Art Books.
• Yasunari Kawabata. Collection of Higashiyama-Kaii's Major Paintings. - Tokyo: Shueisha Co ..