Sayuri Kobayashi

Sayuri Kobayashi (born 1976, Tokyo, Japan) is a contemporary Japanese printmaker who works principally in copperplate engraving and intaglio, producing large-format multi-plate prints that combine engraving line with collage and chine-collé. Her training combines Japanese printmaking instruction at the Doumei Printmaking Workshop in Tokyo with study at the Atelier Contrepoint in Paris — the William Hayter–lineage Paris print studio that has shaped a number of contemporary Japanese intaglio printmakers including Chiaki Ogawa.

Her mature 2020s practice, as documented through the CWAJ Print Show, presents large-scale engravings — exemplified by 'Le scope imparfait' (不完全な器械, 'The Imperfect Instrument,' 2025, 65 × 90 cm) — in which precisely cut engraved line is set against fields of collaged red, ochre, and dark tones. The 2025 work was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show. Her earlier published works include 'Bebop in Red' (2023, 96 × 35 cm engraving and collage), a tall vertical composition that establishes the same vocabulary of engraved-line-against-coloured-collage at a smaller scale.

The Atelier Contrepoint is the Paris studio where the British engraver Stanley William Hayter taught his transferred-colour-engraving technique to several generations of international printmakers from the postwar period onward. Kobayashi's training there situates her practice within a transmission lineage that runs through Hayter, the Atelier 17 group, and a roster of contemporary Japanese printmakers who have spent residencies at the Atelier Contrepoint in the past two decades. The Doumei Printmaking Workshop, by contrast, is a Tokyo printmaking studio rooted in the Japanese intaglio tradition.

Kobayashi's compositions read as small mechanical or geometric forms — the title 'Le scope imparfait' (literally 'the imperfect scope' or 'imperfect instrument') signals her interest in scientific and measurement-related imagery — set against ground fields rendered in chine-collé layers of coloured paper. The combination of the precision-engraved central form and the loosely sized colour-paper ground is characteristic of contemporary intaglio practice that follows the Atelier Contrepoint training: precise central drawing, free colour environment.

Within the contemporary Japanese print scene Kobayashi is one of a cohort of Tokyo-based intaglio printmakers — including Chiaki Ogawa, Daisuke Abe, Litzco Yamamiya — whose practices share the technical commitment to copperplate engraving and the dual-training pattern (Japanese print studio plus Atelier Contrepoint Paris). Her work has been circulated principally through the CWAJ Print Show and through occasional gallery showings; biographical details beyond birth year, location, and training institutions are not currently surfaced through public-facing channels.