Biography
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. She earned her BFA from the Department of Japanese Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai) in 2018, and completed an MFA in Printmaking at the same institution in 2022 — placing her among the contemporary Japanese artists trained in both the Nihonga and Western printmaking traditions. In 2019 she studied in Poland as an Erasmus+ exchange scholar, exhibiting at the University of Wrocław and deepening her engagement with European intaglio practice.
Manabe's mature work brings the two traditions together on a single sheet: images that begin as etched intaglio prints are overpainted with the layered mineral pigments, gofun (oyster-shell white), and gold leaf of the Nihonga palette, so that the etched line survives as an under-drawing beneath what reads at first glance as a painted work. The approach places her within the ongoing Tokyo Geidai conversation about how traditional Japanese painting and Western printmaking can be reconciled at the level of the single sheet.
Her output ranges from small-format intaglio prints to larger mineral-pigment paintings on paper, hanging scrolls, lithographs, and artist's books. Across these formats she returns to a consistent vocabulary of imagery drawn from the boundary between everyday life and imagination — figures who eat, sleep, dance, and are carried, alongside fairytale creatures that surface within otherwise domestic scenes. The mineral-pigment palette gives the work a distinctly Japanese-traditional chromatic register, while the etched line anchors each figure within the pigment field.
Manabe has exhibited in Japan and abroad. Her solo shows include 'たたずむあの人' (The Girl, Standing Still) at Isetan Shinjuku in Tokyo and 'Dream of Dancing at a Volcano' at Sukiwa in Tokyo (2022), and she took part in ART FAIR TOKYO 2018 at the Tokyo International Forum and in Art Expo Malaysia. From 20 November 2024 to 31 January 2025 she held a solo exhibition at HIDDEN gallery in Prague (Bořivojova), presented as part of the gallery's series on contemporary Japanese artists.
Trained at Tokyo Geidai and working at the intersection of Nihonga and printmaking, Manabe belongs to a younger generation of Japanese artists whose hybrid painting-and-print practice has begun to circulate internationally, notably through her representation by HIDDEN gallery in Prague. Her practice is documented through her own artist site and her HIDDEN gallery profile.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1994
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Travel ScenesTransportation
- Works Indexed
- 4
Frequently Asked Questions
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. She earned her BFA from the Department of Japanese Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai) in 2018, and completed an MFA in Printmaking at the same institution in 2022 — placing her among the contemporary Japanese artists trained in both the Nihonga and Western printmaking traditions. In 2019 she studied in Poland as an Erasmus+ exchange scholar, exhibiting at the University of Wrocław and deepening her engagement with European intaglio practice.
Yukako Manabe was active born in 1994. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Yukako Manabe'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.
Yukako Manabe's prints frequently feature travel scenes, transportation.
