Hiroshi Katsuragawa was a Japanese artist closely associated with the postwar avant-garde art movement in Japan.
12 Facts About Hiroshi Katsuragawa
1.
2.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa's artworks were featured prominently in the 2010 documentary film ANPO: Art X War by American documentary filmmaker Linda Hoaglund.
3.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa was born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan in 1924.
4.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa enrolled in the Sapporo Commercial School in 1937.
5.
In 1948, Hiroshi Katsuragawa moved to Tokyo and matriculated at Tama Art University.
6.
Around this time Hiroshi Katsuragawa dropped out of Tama Art University.
7.
In 1952, Hiroshi Katsuragawa joined the Avant-Garde Art Society, which had been formed by Chozaburo Inoue, Iri Maruki, Tadashi Yoshii and others in 1947 and was closely aligned with the Japan Communist Party.
8.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa spent most of his time drawing socialist realist sketches of the suffering of the impoverished farm families and distributing copies of them as propaganda leaflets.
9.
Hiroshi Katsuragawa contributed a large-scale painting in a surrealist vein called Even So They Keep On Going which depicted a wounded person hobbling along on crutches, whose bandages were strongly reminiscent of the National Diet Building in Tokyo which was the focus of the anti-Treaty protests.
10.
In 2004 a retrospective solo exhibition of Hiroshi Katsuragawa's works was held at Art Gallery Kan in Tokyo.
11.
In 2010, Hiroshi Katsuragawa's works were prominently featured in American filmmaker Linda Hoaglund's documentary film about postwar Japanese anti-war art, ANPO: Art X War.
12.
That same year, Hiroshi Katsuragawa donated 50 of his large-scale oil paintings to Tokyo's Toshima Ward, where he had resided since 1961, and two more retrospective solo exhibitions of his work were held.