Kuniko Satake

Kuniko Satake (佐竹邦子, born 1970, Kanagawa) is a Japanese printmaker and educator whose practice spans lithography, woodblock, and intaglio. She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Print Making at Tama Art University in Tokyo, and is one of the most internationally award-decorated contemporary Japanese printmakers of her generation.

Satake was born in Kanagawa Prefecture and trained at Tama Art University, completing a BFA in Oil Painting in 1995 and an MFA in Printmaking in 1997. She joined the Tama Art University faculty soon after graduation and has remained on staff in the Print Making Department, where she co-supervised the publication of the studio technique manual 'Let's Make a Lithograph' in 2013. She has additionally led workshops on Japanese print techniques at institutions in Taiwan and Thailand.

Her award history reaches across more than two decades and three continents. In Japan she received the Grand Prize at the Japan Print Association Exhibition (2000), with subsequent Associate Gold and Bronze Prizes in 2002 and 2003 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Internationally she has been recognised at the Kochi International Triennial of Prints in three consecutive editions — winning the Silver Prize at the 2014 edition and prizes at the 2005 and 2008 editions — and at the Tokyo Wonder Wall 2003 International Exhibition Award. In 2005 she received the Agency for Cultural Affairs Purchase Award (Japan); in 2015 she was awarded the Purchase Prize at the Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition; and her work was included in the Cluj International Mini-Print Biennial (Romania) in 1999, 2001, and 2003.

Her work was featured in the major exhibition 'Unbound: Contemporary Woodblock Prints' at the Shanghai Mingyuan Art Museum (2014), and she has held solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Bangladesh, Paris, Shanghai, and Brisbane. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Queensland College of Art (Griffith University, Brisbane), one of the principal Asia-Pacific exchange residency programmes for contemporary Japanese printmakers.

Her prints are held in over fifteen public collections including the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Japan), the National Art Museum of Romania, the State University of New Mexico, and museums across Taiwan, Thailand, and Poland. The University of Porto's IN Pure Print research project profiles her as one of the international printmakers documented in the comparative study of contemporary printmaking pedagogy.

Within the Japanese print scene Satake is one of the principal academic-printmaker figures of her generation. Her sustained presence at Tama Art University as a teaching faculty member, her co-authorship of the studio technique manual, and her decades-long international award record together position her as a key transmitter of contemporary Japanese intaglio and lithographic practice to the international print biennial circuit.