COLLECTING JAPANESE PRINTS FEATURED sosaku hanga ARTIST

Mizufune Rokushu

1912 - 1980

Mizufune Rokushu was an educator, shin hanga print artist, and renowned sculptor born in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, in 1912. During his tenure at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts sculpture department, Mizufune attended Hiratsuka Un'ichi's extracurricular mokuhanga course, which nurtured his love of printmaking in addition to sculpture. During this period, Mizufune also co-founded the proletarian Shin Hanga Shudan organization in 1932 and the Zokei Hanga society alongside fellow artist Ono Tadashige in 1937. After exhibiting his work with Nihon Hanga Kyokai in 1933, Mizufune became an active member of the organization. 

After completing his studies at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1936, Mizufune began exhibiting both prints and sculptures; although his prints attracted little attention, he received prizes for his sculptures in regional shows throughout the late 1930s and a major prize at a government-sponsored exhibition in 1941. Furthermore, Mizufune received major awards at government exhibitions in 1947, 1948, and 1950. He continued to exhibit at Shin Buten and Nitten, solidifying his reputation as a sculptor. After the Pacific War, Mizufune worked as an art teacher at the Kanto Gakuin middle school in Yokohama while continuing to win various international competitions. From 1955, he began exhibiting prints more widely and five years later exhibited at the 1960 Tokyo International Print Biennale. From 1961 to 1962, Mizufune took a brief respite to work as a resident artist at the Putney School at Marlboro College in Vermont, thus compounding the international tendencies of his work. However, its underlying sentiment is still very much Japanese in its sense of transience and forlornness, a philosophical concept known as aware. Among his most common motifs are birds and objects associated with the sea. Mizufune Rokushu continued to work in both prints and sculpture until his death in 1980 at the age of sixty-eight.