ARTIST

1969年、東京都生まれ。日本画家。1994年多摩美術大学大学院美術研究科修了。2003年、同年度の文化庁買上優秀美術作品に駝鳥の群像を描いた大作《阿Ⅰ》が選出される。2006年と2013年に紺綬褒章受章。2010年、ニューヨークのチェルシー・アート・ミュージアムにて日本画家として初の個展を開催。2011年、日独交流150周年記念「KOTARO FUKUI」展をドイツ、メミンゲンにて開催。2013年、箱根・岡田美術館の巨大壁画《風・刻》（風神雷神図）を完成。2022年12月、十三代目市川團十郎白猿襲名披露での祝幕を制作。文化庁、愛媛県美術館、佐久市立近代美術館、平塚市美術館、横浜美術館、日南町美術館、岡田美術館、佐藤美術館などに作品が収蔵されているほか、国内外で展覧会を多数開催。

Born in 1969 in Tokyo. Nihonga painter. Completed the graduate program in fine arts at Tama Art University in 1994. In 2003, his large-scale work A I, depicting a group of ostriches, was selected for purchase by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as an outstanding work of art of that year. Received the Medal with Dark Blue Ribbon in 2006 and 2013. In 2010, he held a solo exhibition at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, the first by a Nihonga painter. In 2011, his exhibition “KOTARO FUKUI” was held in Memmingen, Germany, to commemorate 150 years of Japan–Germany exchange. In 2013, he completed Kaze Toki, a monumental mural depicting the Wind God and Thunder God, at the Okada Museum of Art in Hakone. In December 2022, he created the celebratory stage curtain for the name-succession ceremony of Ichikawa Danjuro XIII Hakuen. His works are held in the collections of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Ehime Prefectural Museum of Art, the Saku Municipal Museum of Modern Art, the Hiratsuka Museum of Art, the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Nichinan-cho Museum of Art, the Okada Museum of Art, and the Sato Museum of Art, among others, and he has held numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad.

展示作品

本展では、画業30周年を迎える福井江太郎が、1997年から2000年代初頭にかけて発表した〈駝鳥〉シリーズを中心に、その表現の原点と変遷をたどる。

現在では福井の代名詞ともいえる駝鳥だが、この時期の作品に現れるその姿は、完成されたイメージとは異なり、激しい葛藤や混沌を孕んでいる。鋭い眼差し、伸びやかな首、画面を横切る身体。その存在は、ときに画家自身の内面を映し出すかのようでもある。エッチングを用いた初期作品から、蜜蝋を塗った画面を鉄筆で引っ掻き、墨を浸透させる独自の〈蜜蝋シリーズ〉へ。さらに胡粉の白を生かした〈ホワイトシリーズ〉へと、福井は素材と技法を模索しながら、自らの表現を研ぎ澄ませていった。

本展で紹介するのは、ひとつのモチーフが成熟していく、その途上の軌跡である。初期作品に刻まれた逡巡や衝動までを含めて見つめることで、現在の表現へとつながる画家の思考と時間を浮かび上がらせる。会場では画集『DA』と、その制作過程もあわせて展示・紹介する。

Marking thirty years as a painter, Kotaro Fukui traces the origins and evolution of his practice in this exhibition, centered on his Ostrich series, presented from 1997 into the early 2000s.

Although the ostrich has since become synonymous with Fukui, the birds that appear in the works of this period differ from that now-established image, carrying intense struggle and chaos within them. A piercing gaze, a long, supple neck, a body cutting across the picture plane: at times, the bird seems to mirror the painter’s own inner world. From early works made with etching, to his distinctive Beeswax series, in which he scratched into beeswax-coated surfaces with a stylus and let sumi ink seep in, and on to the White series, which draws on the white of gofun, a pigment made from ground shells, Fukui honed his expression as he explored materials and techniques.

What this exhibition presents is the path of a single motif in the process of maturing. By looking closely at the early works, including the hesitation and impulses inscribed in them, it brings to light the thinking and the time that have led the painter to his present work. The exhibition also presents the art book DA along with the process of its making.