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 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, its Japanese title naming an older-man subject 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. Operating outside the official university accreditation system, it has been historically associated with experimental and avant-garde art 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 relative to the university-trained printmakers more typical of the catalogue.
The playful French-and-Japanese title 'papa in pampa' — pairing the affectionate 'papa' with 'pampa' (grassland) — signals a deliberately whimsical, multilingual register, while the parenthetical Japanese 草原のおじさん makes the figural subject explicit. The choice of drypoint 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, Kusanagi is an early-career printmaker, and her selection at the 68th CWAJ Print Show (Print No. 086) marks her emergence into a principal showcase circuit for current Japanese print activity. Beyond the CWAJ catalogue and her Bigaku-gakkou training, little biographical detail on her practice is 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 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.