Biography
Haruyo Morita (born 1945, Kita-Katsushika District, Saitama Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese-born printmaker resident in London since 1977 whose serigraph editions reframe classical Japanese ukiyo-e iconography — Heian-period twelve-layer kimono (junihitoe), Edo-period courtesans, Meiji-era beauties — through her training as a kimono painter and through the contemporary serigraph medium. Her most-cited print, the 1988 'Twelve-Layer Kimono,' is held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Asian permanent collection.
Morita's artistic talents were evident from childhood. She entered her first regional art competition in 1960, at age fifteen, with her work accepted, and in the following years she won prizes at her prefecture art exhibition (1962) and the Dai-cho ten exhibition. She trained in the traditional craft of kimono design and painting, working as a kimono painter until 1972 — a foundation that would later directly inform her print iconography and her sustained engagement with the visual vocabulary of traditional Japanese costume.
In 1977 Morita relocated to London, where she has lived and worked since. The London move marked her transition from kimono painting to fine-art print. She has held exhibitions in London, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Saudi Arabia, Tokyo, and Yokohama, building a sustained collector base for her serigraph editions.
Her signature 1988 work 'Twelve-Layer Kimono' is a Showa-period serigraph with painted designs (ink, color, and gold on paper). The print depicts a Heian-period female figure in the formal junihitoe (twelve-layered) court robe of the kind associated with Heian imperial court ladies such as the writers Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon. The work was issued as a signed and numbered limited edition, and was added to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' permanent Asian holdings as a private-collection gift in 2017 under the curatorial direction of the museum's Asian art expert Li Jian.
Morita's broader output includes additional kimono and bijinga (beautiful women) serigraphs from the 1980s, among them 'Natsu N Yo,' along with a body of decorative kimono-figure imagery that has been widely reproduced as prints, jigsaw puzzles, calendars, and posters. Her formal training as a kimono painter underpins the technical rigour of her original serigraph editions.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1945
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Silkscreen
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Haruyo Morita (born 1945, Kita-Katsushika District, Saitama Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese-born printmaker resident in London since 1977 whose serigraph editions reframe classical Japanese ukiyo-e iconography — Heian-period twelve-layer kimono (junihitoe), Edo-period courtesans, Meiji-era beauties — through her training as a kimono painter and through the contemporary serigraph medium. Her most-cited print, the 1988 'Twelve-Layer Kimono,' is held in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Asian permanent collection.
Haruyo Morita was active born in 1945. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Haruyo Morita'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.
Haruyo Morita's prints frequently feature silkscreen.