Biography
Furuya Hiroko (古屋博子, also rendered 古谷博子 in some Japanese sources) was born in Tokyo in 1961 and is a professor in the Printmaking specialization within the Department of Painting at Tama Art University (Tama Bijutsu Daigaku), one of the leading private art universities in Japan. She received both her undergraduate and graduate training at Tama Art University — graduating from the Department of Painting in the Oil Painting specialization in 1986 and completing the master's programme in Painting at the Tama Art University Graduate School in 1988 — and joined the Tama Art University faculty, where she has held a professorship in the Printmaking specialization since 2014. Her research and studio practice — described in her university faculty profile as an investigation of the diverse characteristics of printmaking, centred on woodblock, with particular attention to the material qualities of Japanese paper and the role of negative space (yohaku) — sits inside the larger postwar Japanese tradition in which woodblock practice is treated as a continuous medium of inquiry rather than a fixed style. Her recognition began early: she received the Yamaguchi Gen New Artist Prize at the 56th exhibition of the Japan Print Association (Nihon Hanga Kyōkai) in 1987, was named a government-sponsored research artist (Geijutsuka Kokunai Kenshū-in) in 1990 — a programme administered by the Agency for Cultural Affairs that supports advanced study by working artists — and received the Vice-Grand Prize at the 7th Kōchi International Print Biennale in 2008. Her exhibition history includes the curated survey Mokuhanga: From the End of the Meiji Period to the Present (Nerima Ward Museum of Art, 1992) and the major retrospective One Hundred Years of Japanese Woodblock Prints: From Sōsaku Hanga to New Print Expression (Nagoya City Art Museum, 2004), the latter the central institutional account of the sōsaku-hanga lineage into which her own practice flows. She has participated in international print exhibitions in South Korea (2007), Turkey (2012), Taiwan (2011), Canada (2014), Croatia (2015), Poland (2017) and China (2021), among others, and her print Wind Resonance No. 2 — a wooden-block work approximately 75 by 75 centimetres — is widely reproduced in connection with her university profile as a representative of the recent practice. She has also been active in the contemporary mokuhanga community: she serves on the board of the International Mokuhanga Association in Japan and acted as a juror for the IMC2021 (Sumi-Fusion) juried international exhibition in Nara. Her work is held principally in Japanese institutional and university collections; a complete public-collection list has not been compiled in English-language sources. She belongs to the cohort of women printmakers — alongside Akiko Taniguchi, Tomoko Mihara and others of the same generation — who consolidated Tama Art University's reputation as one of the strongest centres of contemporary mokuhanga teaching in Japan after the older Geidai-centred network of the Onchi Kōshirō wing of sōsaku-hanga.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1961
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- LandscapesRivers & Lakes
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Furuya Hiroko (古屋博子, also rendered 古谷博子 in some Japanese sources) was born in Tokyo in 1961 and is a professor in the Printmaking specialization within the Department of Painting at Tama Art University (Tama Bijutsu Daigaku), one of the leading private art universities in Japan. She received both her undergraduate and graduate training at Tama Art University — graduating from the Department of Painting in the Oil Painting specialization in 1986 and completing the master's programme in Painting at the Tama Art University Graduate School in 1988 — and joined the Tama Art University faculty, where she has held a professorship in the Printmaking specialization since 2014. Her research and studio practice — described in her university faculty profile as an investigation of the diverse characteristics of printmaking, centred on woodblock, with particular attention to the material qualities of Japanese paper and the role of negative space (yohaku) — sits inside the larger postwar Japanese tradition in which woodblock practice is treated as a continuous medium of inquiry rather than a fixed style. Her recognition began early: she received the Yamaguchi Gen New Artist Prize at the 56th exhibition of the Japan Print Association (Nihon Hanga Kyōkai) in 1987, was named a government-sponsored research artist (Geijutsuka Kokunai Kenshū-in) in 1990 — a programme administered by the Agency for Cultural Affairs that supports advanced study by working artists — and received the Vice-Grand Prize at the 7th Kōchi International Print Biennale in 2008. Her exhibition history includes the curated survey Mokuhanga: From the End of the Meiji Period to the Present (Nerima Ward Museum of Art, 1992) and the major retrospective One Hundred Years of Japanese Woodblock Prints: From Sōsaku Hanga to New Print Expression (Nagoya City Art Museum, 2004), the latter the central institutional account of the sōsaku-hanga lineage into which her own practice flows. She has participated in international print exhibitions in South Korea (2007), Turkey (2012), Taiwan (2011), Canada (2014), Croatia (2015), Poland (2017) and China (2021), among others, and her print Wind Resonance No. 2 — a wooden-block work approximately 75 by 75 centimetres — is widely reproduced in connection with her university profile as a representative of the recent practice. She has also been active in the contemporary mokuhanga community: she serves on the board of the International Mokuhanga Association in Japan and acted as a juror for the IMC2021 (Sumi-Fusion) juried international exhibition in Nara. Her work is held principally in Japanese institutional and university collections; a complete public-collection list has not been compiled in English-language sources. She belongs to the cohort of women printmakers — alongside Akiko Taniguchi, Tomoko Mihara and others of the same generation — who consolidated Tama Art University's reputation as one of the strongest centres of contemporary mokuhanga teaching in Japan after the older Geidai-centred network of the Onchi Kōshirō wing of sōsaku-hanga.
Furuya Hiroko was active born in 1961. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Furuya Hiroko's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Furuya Hiroko's prints frequently feature landscapes, rivers & lakes.
Original prints by Furuya Hiroko can be found in collections including Art Institute of Chicago.
Furuya Hiroko is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.