Yukako Manabe

Yukako Manabe (真鍋裕加子, b. 1994, Tokyo) is a Japanese printmaker and painter whose practice integrates traditional Japanese mineral-pigment painting (Nihonga) with contemporary intaglio and lithography techniques. She earned her undergraduate degree from the Japanese Painting Department at Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai), and subsequently completed a Master's degree in Printmaking at the same institution — placing her within the small group of contemporary Japanese artists trained in both Nihonga and Western printmaking traditions. Between 2019 and 2020 she studied in Poland through the ERASMUS+ international exchange programme, deepening her engagement with European intaglio practice during the residency.

Manabe's mature output explicitly combines the two traditions through what she calls 'Mineral Pigments on Intaglio' — works that begin as etched copperplate prints and are subsequently overpainted with the layered Nihonga mineral-pigment palette of mineral malachite, azurite, gofun (oyster-shell white), and gold leaf. The result is a hybrid object that retains the etched line as a structural under-drawing while reading at first glance as a painted Nihonga work. The format positions her within the continuing Tokyo Geidai conversation about how traditional Japanese painting and Western print can be reconciled at the level of the single sheet.

Documented prints from her catalogue include the small-format 'A Summer Resort' (each panel 68 × 73 mm, gold leaf and mineral pigments on intaglio), 'Water' (each 120 × 90 mm, mineral pigments on intaglio), 'I Feed You Cherry' (90 × 120 mm, mineral pigments on intaglio), 'A Cage' (籠, 297 × 210 mm, mineral pigments on intaglio), 'A Mermaid Tail' (297 × 210 mm, mineral pigments on intaglio), 'A Vague Story' (雲を掴むような話, 210 × 297 mm, intaglio), 'Cross-section of Fish' (200 × 100 mm, intaglio), 'Cutting a Youkan' (297 × 201 mm, mineral pigments on intaglio), and the small-format pure-intaglio prints 'A Girl' (90 × 120 mm) and 'You' (90 × 120 mm). Her medium-and-large-format mineral-pigment-on-paper works include 'Float' (500 × 650 mm), 'Taste of Rain' (雨の味, 500 × 650 mm), 'Fish Eater' (410 × 318 mm), 'Dancing Twins' (300 × 300 mm), 'Come Here' (おいで, 1167 × 950 mm), and 'A Caged Elephant' (700 × 1000 mm). Her lithography output is exemplified by 'Dream' (夢, 500 × 550 mm, copper leaf on lithography) and the artist book 'Dream on Leafs' (lithograph book).

Major exhibitions include her solo show 'たたずむあの人' (The Girl, Standing Still / She Who Stands Still, 273 × 190 mm, Isetan Shinjuku Tokyo), her solo presentation 'Dream of Dancing at a Volcano' at Sukiwa (2022), her ART FAIR TOKYO 2018 participation at the Tokyo International Forum, and her Art Expo Malaysia (MECC) showing. Her solo exhibition at HIDDEN gallery in Prague (Bořivojova) in November 2024 - January 2025 was part of HIDDEN's Japanese contemporary-artist series and included works including 'Always Sleeping' (hanging scroll), 'Swan' (hanging scroll), 'Reborn Yesterday,' 'A Person Eating Fish,' 'A Story Like Grasping Clouds (Blue),' 'Embracing Air,' 'Put Your Hand Here,' and 'A Crawling Man.'

Manabe's iconographic vocabulary draws on the boundary between everyday life and imagination — figures who eat, sleep, dance, and are carried; crystallized small-scale episodes of domestic life; mythic-fairytale-creatures that surface within the domestic scene (the swan, the mermaid, the caged elephant, the dancing twins). The Nihonga mineral-pigment palette gives her work a distinctly Japanese-traditional chromatic register; the etched line provides the under-drawing that anchors the figure within the mineral-pigment field.

Within the contemporary Japanese print scene Manabe is one of the most visible Tokyo Geidai-trained mid-career artists working at the Nihonga-and-print intersection. Her HIDDEN gallery (Prague) representation, her ART FAIR TOKYO and Art Expo Malaysia presence, and her sustained Tokyo Geidai-network output together place her at the centre of the East-Central European reception of contemporary Japanese print-painting. Her practice is documented through her artist site (yukakomanabe.com), her HIDDEN gallery profile, and the Tokyo Art Beat exhibition record.