Biography
Yamaguchi Susumu (山口進, 1897-1983) was a Japanese sōsaku-hanga (creative print) artist whose woodblock prints of the mountains of Nagano placed him among the most distinctive landscape printmakers of the Shōwa period. Born on 25 January 1897 in Ina, Kamiina district, Nagano prefecture, he came from a region encircled by the Central and Northern Japanese Alps, and the high peaks, ponds, and dead forests of that landscape would become the subject of his entire mature career. He is not to be confused with Yamaguchi Gen (1896-1976), a slightly older sōsaku-hanga colleague with whom he shared the Ichimokukai circle in postwar Tokyo.
Yamaguchi taught himself woodblock printing in his youth before turning to formal study of Western-style painting in Tokyo. Between 1920 and 1922 he studied yōga under Kuroda Seiki at the Hakubakai (White Horse Society) painting institute, the institution that did more than any other to introduce French academic and impressionist drawing to Japan. During those student years he also fell in with the sōsaku-hanga circle around Yamamoto Kanae and Onchi Kōshirō, joining the Nihon Sōsaku-Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Creative Print Association), founded in 1918 to advance the jiga-jikoku-jizuri ('self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed') principle that defined the movement.
The decisive turn came in 1934, when forty-nine of his prints were accepted into a major exhibition of Japanese sōsaku-hanga held in Paris. The wide reception of his work in France gave Yamaguchi the confidence to commit fully to the woodblock medium, and over the following decades he developed a recognisable signature style: thick, saturated layers of water-based pigment on dampened torinoko paper, printed from grain-exposed blocks so that the wood itself contributed texture to the image. His palette favoured deep blues and greens against warm earth tones, and his contours had a bold, almost cloisonné quality that contemporary critics compared to the French painter Georges Rouault. Through the 1930s he exhibited at the Hanga Kyōkai and other sōsaku-hanga venues, while supporting himself as a schoolteacher; his work was also included in the painting events of the art competitions at the 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics.
The wartime and postwar years deepened Yamaguchi's commitment to sōsaku-hanga. In 1939 Onchi Kōshirō founded the Ichimokukai (一木会, 'First Thursday Society'), a small private gathering of creative-print artists who met monthly at Onchi's Tokyo home, and during the 1940s the group produced the Ichimoku-shū (一木集, 'First Thursday Collection') — hand-assembled portfolios in which each member contributed an original print to be circulated among the others. Yamaguchi participated in this distinctively communal project, and several of his Ichimoku-shū sheets are among the most important documents of his postwar work: Chuzenji-ko (Lake Chuzenji), contributed to Volume 2 in 1946; Yonen jidai no Sesshū (The Child Sesshū), contributed to Volume 4 in 1948; and Inaka shibai (Country Theatre), contributed to Volume 6 in 1950. Through these portfolios he kept company with Onchi, Sekino Jun'ichirō, Yamaguchi Gen, Maekawa Sempan, and the other figures who shaped the postwar revival of the creative print.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1897–1983
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Sōsaku-hanga
- Works Indexed
- 8
Frequently Asked Questions
Yamaguchi Susumu (山口進, 1897-1983) was a Japanese sōsaku-hanga (creative print) artist whose woodblock prints of the mountains of Nagano placed him among the most distinctive landscape printmakers of the Shōwa period. Born on 25 January 1897 in Ina, Kamiina district, Nagano prefecture, he came from a region encircled by the Central and Northern Japanese Alps, and the high peaks, ponds, and dead forests of that landscape would become the subject of his entire mature career. He is not to be confused with Yamaguchi Gen (1896-1976), a slightly older sōsaku-hanga colleague with whom he shared the Ichimokukai circle in postwar Tokyo.
Yamaguchi Susumu was active from 1897 to 1983. They were associated with the Sōsaku-hanga movement.
Yamaguchi Susumu's work was shaped by the Sōsaku-hanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Sōsaku-hanga: ## What is sōsaku-hanga? Sōsaku-hanga (創作版画, "creative prints") was a twentieth-century Japanese print movement defined by a single commitment: the artist must design, carve, and print every work alone.
Original prints by Yamaguchi Susumu can be found in collections including Harvard Art Museums, Honolulu Museum of Art, British Museum, Art Institute of Chicago.
