Takeo Terasaki

Takeo Terasaki (寺崎武男, 1883–1967) was a Japanese Western-style (yōga) painter and printmaker who was an early participant in the sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) movement. Born in Tokyo on March 30, 1883, he graduated from the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1907 and then traveled to Europe as a government-sponsored student, settling in Venice, where he studied the techniques of fresco, tempera, and etching. This grounding in European printmaking and Renaissance wall-painting shaped the rest of his career.

Like the pioneers of sōsaku-hanga, Terasaki embraced the principle that a printmaker should personally conceive and produce his own works rather than rely on the traditional collaborative division of labor between artist, carver, and printer. In 1918 he was among the founders of the Japan Creative Prints Association (Nihon Sōsaku-Hanga Kyōkai), established together with Kanae Yamamoto and other artists of his generation, and he later took part in founding the Japan Print Association. His own prints were chiefly etchings rather than woodcuts, reflecting the copperplate methods he had learned in Italy, and his involvement helped give momentum to the movement during its formative years.

Terasaki worked between Italian and Japanese subjects throughout his career. His years in Venice informed paintings and prints of European scenes, while in later life he became known for works depicting the mythology and early history of Japan's Bōsō region. He also devoted considerable effort to researching and reviving fresco and tempera wall-painting — techniques then little practiced in Japan — leaving murals for churches and other buildings.

While never achieving the prominence of the movement's leading figures, Terasaki's participation in the founding generation of creative-print artists contributed to the movement's early momentum, and his championing of European tempera and fresco methods left a distinct mark on modern Japanese art. He continued to paint and exhibit through the middle decades of the twentieth century, and he died on February 16, 1967.