Tsukasa Izuhara

Tsukasa Izuhara (born 1953, Kyoto) is a Japanese lithographer with a sustained practice based in Kyoto. His selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Machine Blossoms' (機械の花), a 50 × 40 cm lithograph from 2019, places him within the established cohort of senior Japanese lithographic artists working through the Kansai region's distinctive print tradition.

Izuhara trained at Kyoto City University of the Arts (KCUA), the principal Kansai-region art university and one of the two top-tier Japanese art universities outside Tokyo. KCUA's printmaking program has been a major generator of contemporary Japanese print since the 1960s, and the lithography stream in particular has produced a distinguished line of practitioners.

Izuhara's principal teacher was Hideo Yoshihara (1931-2007), one of the most internationally significant Japanese lithographers of the postwar generation. Yoshihara was a founding member of both the Gutai Group in the 1950s and the Demokrato Artists Association — two of the most important Japanese postwar avant-garde formations — and turned to lithography in the late 1950s. His print 'Sunflower' won first prize at the inaugural Tokyo Print Biennial in 1956 and his international reputation was established through subsequent biennial selections in Europe and the Americas. His subsequent teaching career at Kyoto City University of the Arts shaped successive generations of Kansai lithographers.

Izuhara's training under Yoshihara situates him within one of the most documented and influential teaching lineages in postwar Japanese lithography. The Yoshihara aesthetic — abstract compositions with dense pigment and a strong graphic register — informs Izuhara's mature work. The title 'Machine Blossoms' (機械の花, kikai no hana, literally 'flowers of the machine') suggests a hybrid imagery combining mechanical and organic forms, characteristic of the Kansai post-Yoshihara lithography vocabulary.

The 2019 dating of 'Machine Blossoms' indicates that the work in the 2025 CWAJ Print Show is a recent rather than historical print — the print was completed six years before its CWAJ selection, well within the period of active CWAJ catalog inclusion. The 50 × 40 cm sheet size is a moderate lithographic plate. The CWAJ catalog assigned 'Machine Blossoms' Print No. 055 in the 68th edition.

Further biographical detail beyond the CWAJ Print Show entry — Izuhara's broader exhibition history, museum holdings, gallery representation, and earlier work in the Yoshihara teaching line — is not currently surfaced through the public-facing English-language channels. Kansai-area exhibition records and the Kyoto City University of the Arts alumni network would be the principal next-step research targets for extending this bio.