Minami Kunzo

Minami Kunzō (南薫造, 1883–1950) was a Japanese painter and an early figure in the sōsaku-hanga (creative-print) movement. The eldest son of a physician, he was born on 21 July 1883 in Kure City, Hiroshima Prefecture, on the Seto Inland Sea, and studied Western-style (yōga) painting from 1902 to 1907 at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts under Okada Saburōsuke.

In 1907 Minami travelled to England, where he studied British art, and in 1909 he spent several months in Paris encountering Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism before travelling through Europe and the United States and returning to Japan in 1910. During his years abroad he became close to the artist Tomimoto Kenkichi (1886–1963); the two experimented with woodblock printmaking in Europe and continued after their return, sharing a house in Shinjuku, Tokyo. In 1911 Minami was given a one-person show at the Rōkandō gallery, recorded as the first solo exhibition in Tokyo by a living artist of sōsaku-hanga. His bright, softly brushed canvases, shown from early on with the plein-air Hakuba-kai (White Horse Society), are often described as embodying a Japanese form of Impressionism.

Minami was a founding member of the Kōfūkai in 1912 and helped establish the Japan Watercolor Society in 1913. He became a member of the Japan Art Academy (Nihon Geijutsu-in) in 1929 and served as a professor at his alma mater, the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, from 1932 to 1943; his work also featured in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics. On 1 July 1944 he was designated an Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu Gigei-in). He died on 6 January 1950.