Biography
Maruyama Hiroshi (丸山浩司, born 1953) is a Japanese contemporary printmaker whose mature practice consists of large-format abstract woodblock prints organized around horizontal bands of saturated colour set against dark grounds, and whose work has long been represented by the Yoseido Gallery in Tokyo's Ginza district. He was born in 1953 in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, and studied fine art in Tokyo. His exhibition record begins in the late 1970s: he took part in the CWAJ (College Women's Association of Japan) Print Show — the principal annual juried exhibition of contemporary Japanese prints, held in Tokyo since 1956 — across the years 1977 through 1981, and his work was included in the Ljubljana international print biennial in 1978. He became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association), the principal national printmakers' association in Japan, from 1980. Alongside his long association with Yoseido Gallery, he has also shown at the Nichido Gallery in Ginza. His signature body of work is the Midnight Blue series, in which wide horizontal bands of intricately printed colour run across a deep blue or black ground; the bands carry minute internal variation produced by overlapping block impressions and by careful management of brush load and pigment dilution, so that they read at a distance as flat fields and at close range as a dense, almost atmospheric surface. The result aligns his work with the colour-field sensibility of the post-war sōsaku-hanga (creative print) tradition. Comprehensive public-collection holdings have not been published in English; the principal documentary record is the long-running Yoseido Gallery catalogue together with the CWAJ and Nihon Hanga Kyōkai exhibition lists.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1953
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- GardensTreesLandscapes
- Works Indexed
- 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Maruyama Hiroshi (丸山浩司, born 1953) is a Japanese contemporary printmaker whose mature practice consists of large-format abstract woodblock prints organized around horizontal bands of saturated colour set against dark grounds, and whose work has long been represented by the Yoseido Gallery in Tokyo's Ginza district. He was born in 1953 in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, and studied fine art in Tokyo. His exhibition record begins in the late 1970s: he took part in the CWAJ (College Women's Association of Japan) Print Show — the principal annual juried exhibition of contemporary Japanese prints, held in Tokyo since 1956 — across the years 1977 through 1981, and his work was included in the Ljubljana international print biennial in 1978. He became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association), the principal national printmakers' association in Japan, from 1980. Alongside his long association with Yoseido Gallery, he has also shown at the Nichido Gallery in Ginza. His signature body of work is the Midnight Blue series, in which wide horizontal bands of intricately printed colour run across a deep blue or black ground; the bands carry minute internal variation produced by overlapping block impressions and by careful management of brush load and pigment dilution, so that they read at a distance as flat fields and at close range as a dense, almost atmospheric surface. The result aligns his work with the colour-field sensibility of the post-war sōsaku-hanga (creative print) tradition. Comprehensive public-collection holdings have not been published in English; the principal documentary record is the long-running Yoseido Gallery catalogue together with the CWAJ and Nihon Hanga Kyōkai exhibition lists.
Maruyama Hiroshi was active born in 1953. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Maruyama Hiroshi'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.
Maruyama Hiroshi's prints frequently feature gardens, trees, landscapes.
Original prints by Maruyama Hiroshi can be found in collections including ukiyo-e.org, Museum of Fine Arts.
