Morita Shiryū: Bokujin

Morita Shiryū: Bokujin

January 10-23, 2021. Kyoto.
January 29-February 13, 2021. Tokyo.

Shibunkaku is pleased to announce Morita Shiryū: Bokujin, an exhibition that brings into the spotlight an artist who left his distinctive mark on modern art and irrevocably changed the landscape of Japanese postwar calligraphy.

In the early 1950s, calls for reformation grew increasingly stronger from within the circles of calligraphy, one of the traditional arts. The emerging avant-garde movement of calligraphy, incorporating inspiration from American and European abstract painting, soon began to garner recognition on the stages of the international art world. At the center of this unprecedented endeavor connecting East and West, and fusing the traditional art of calligraphy with modern abstract painting, was the calligrapher Morita Shiryū. In a balancing act of combining a time-honored art with his strong intent to innovate, Morita breathed new life into calligraphy and pushed it into the attention of the world.

The journal Bokubi (Beauty of Ink), founded by Morita in 1951 and running for about 300 issues, was a new, one-of-a-kind platform for the arts that in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged the exchange among artists regardless of genre or country of origin. The art association Bokujinkai (Ink People), established in 1952 in Kyoto by Morita and four like-minded artists to challenge the outdated conventionality of Japanese calligraphy circles and re-establish the field as a genre of modern art, grew into the most representative group of Japanese postwar avant-garde calligraphy, and in the 1960s extended its activities internationally.