Biography
Kaoru Kusanagi (born 1995, Tokyo, Japan) is a young Japanese printmaker working primarily in drypoint, currently based in Tokyo. She trained at Bigaku-gakkou (美学校), an independent Tokyo art school founded in the late 1960s that has trained a number of contemporary Japanese artists working outside the conventional university art-school pathway. Her recent work was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show 2025.
Her 2025 drypoint 'papa in pampa' (草原のおじさん, 'Man in the Grassland,' 36 × 52 cm) shown in the CWAJ catalogue establishes the visual register of her current practice: a small-to-medium-scale intaglio composition in landscape orientation, with the Japanese title 'Man in the Grassland' announcing a figural subject (an older man) set within an open natural environment. The drypoint technique — direct incising with a needle into the copper plate, without acid biting — produces the soft, slightly burred line that distinguishes drypoint from etching and gives her prints their hand-drawn, sketch-like quality.
The Bigaku-gakkou ('aesthetic school') is an unusual training credential within Japanese contemporary art education. Founded in 1969 and operating outside the official university accreditation system, it has been historically associated with experimental art, manga, and graphic-design instruction, and has produced a number of artists whose work moves between fine art and illustration. Kusanagi's training there places her in a non-traditional pathway compared to the Tama Art University and Geidai-trained CWAJ printmakers who dominate the principal cohorts of the catalogue.
The playful French-and-Japanese title 'papa in pampa' — combining the affectionate French 'papa' (father) with 'pampa' (the South American grasslands) — signals a deliberately whimsical, multilingual register, and the parenthetical Japanese 'Man in the Grassland' (草原のおじさん) makes the figural subject explicit. The choice of drypoint technique for this kind of subject continues a strong tradition of contemporary Japanese intaglio practice in which figurative or narrative compositions are rendered through hand-incised line on copper.
At 30 years old Kusanagi is one of the youngest CWAJ-circulating Japanese printmakers in the 2025 catalogue. Her selection at the 68th CWAJ Print Show (Print No. 086) marks her early-career emergence into the principal showcase circuit for current Japanese print activity. Beyond the CWAJ catalogue and the Bigaku-gakkou training credential, biographical detail on her practice is not currently surfaced through public-facing online channels.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1995
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Kaoru Kusanagi (born 1995, Tokyo, Japan) is a young Japanese printmaker working primarily in drypoint, currently based in Tokyo. She trained at Bigaku-gakkou (美学校), an independent Tokyo art school founded in the late 1960s that has trained a number of contemporary Japanese artists working outside the conventional university art-school pathway. Her recent work was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show 2025.
Kaoru Kusanagi was active born in 1995. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Kaoru Kusanagi'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.