27 Facts About Harue Koga

Harue Koga was a Japanese avant-garde painter active from the 1910s to the early 1930s.

Harue Koga is considered to be one of the first and one of the most representative Japanese surrealist painters.

Harue Koga was born Yoshio Koga in 1895 to parents Seijun and Ishi Koga in the town of Kurume in Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan.

Koga began attending Hiroshi Jinjo Elementary School at age seven, and shortly after his father, Seijun, gave his position of head priest to his son-in-law to focus his time on his son's education, hoping that Koga would follow in the family tradition by becoming a Buddhist priest.

Harue Koga continued his education at Kurume Higher Elementary School at age 11, and at 14 moved on to Meizenko Middle School.

In 1912, Harue Koga defied the student code of conduct at Meizenko Middle School and was expelled.

Local tradition in Kurume records that Harue Koga purposely violated the rule and got himself expelled in order to show his family how serious he was about pursuing his love of art.

That same year, at age 17, Harue Koga left Kurume against his family's wishes and traveled to Tokyo with the intent of studying art in a more formal setting.

In 1913, Harue Koga enrolled in the Institute of the Japanese Watercolor Society, which he became closely affiliated with over the course of his career.

Harue Koga's family opposed the marriage until he agreed to succeed his father as the local priest.

Harue Koga was an avid fan of poetry, and for a time considered a career in naniwabushi, a traditional Japanese style of musical theater.

Harue Koga developed a deep appreciation for Asakusa Opera, an extremely popular form of light opera staged in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, and would frequent shows in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

Thereafter, Harue Koga continued to have his paintings accepted into the Nika Exhibition every year until his death.

In 1922 Harue Koga assisted in the formation of the avant-garde art group "Action", which endeavored to create art candidly and without the potential limitations of existing artistic movements.

Harue Koga continued to paint a majority of his paintings in this style until 1929.

Harue Koga exhibited paintings in this style at the Nika Exhibition over the course of his career, as well as the Prince Shotoku Fine Art Exhibition in 1926.

Harue Koga had a severe nervous breakdown in November 1927 and briefly returned to Fukuoka before moving to Nagasaki in May 1928.

Harue Koga recovered from his neurasthenia and returned to Tokyo in October 1928.

Around this time, Harue Koga became deeply interested in emerging schools of thought and was introduced to painters Seiji Togo and Kongo Abe, who had just returned from studying art in Europe.

In 1929, Harue Koga began painting cover designs and illustrations for various magazines and novels, and in June of 1930 he was given the opportunity to work on set design of the play Ruru due to his connection to Togo and Abe.

In 1929, Harue Koga's painting style shifted, and he began exhibiting large-scale paintings in a photomontage style, which are considered some of the first Surrealist paintings in Japan.

Recent scholarship has uncovered how Harue Koga appropriated a wide variety of images and motifs from contemporary mass-media sources such as photo magazines, newspapers, film stills, and postcards.

However, Harue Koga's technique was unique in that he did not simply cut and paste from printed media onto his canvas, but instead modified, resized, and rearranged objects by painting them photorealistically onto his large canvases.

Harue Koga continued to develop artworks in this style until his death in 1933.

In 1929, Harue Koga became ill and blamed it on the strain caused by participating in a major exhibition.

Harue Koga was described by friends and family throughout his lifetime as a sickly individual.

Nakano felt that Harue Koga's symptoms were characteristic of a schizoid personality, particularly given his preference for solitude and occasional episodes of paranoia.