27 Facts About Yozo Hamaguchi

Yozo Hamaguchi was a Japanese copper printmaker who specialized in mezzotint and was responsible for its resurgence as a printmaking medium in the mid-20th century.

The corpus of Yozo Hamaguchi's prints are focused on the still life genre.

However, Yozo Hamaguchi valued its emphasis on tonality and texture as expressed in a work's lighting and tactile qualities.

Yozo Hamaguchi's works attained global exposure after Hamaguchi participated in the prestigious Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil and was included in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy.

Hamaguchi's legacy is preserved in the Musee Hamaguchi Yozo that possesses much of his prints and it frequently organizes exhibitions centered on his printmaking, alongside works by his wife Keiko Minami and contemporary practitioners of mezzotint printmaking.

Yozo Hamaguchi was born in Hirogawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to an upper-class family.

From an early age, Yozo Hamaguchi desired to pursue a career in the arts instead of the family business.

Yozo Hamaguchi entered the Tokyo Art School in 1927 to study sculpture, but left in 1930 to pursue an independent career.

The Yoga style painter Ryuzaburo Umehara advised Yozo Hamaguchi to seek artistic training and inspiration in France as this was the means through which he developed his style.

Shortly thereafter, Yozo Hamaguchi was introduced to the mezzotint medium after Cummings gifted him with a set of intaglio tools.

In 1937, Yozo Hamaguchi tried his hand at mezzotint and produced his first image, Cat, in which the titular subject is shown reclining with its front paw extended in an indiscernible white space.

Yozo Hamaguchi returned to France in 1953 to market his prints in the Parisian art scene.

Concurrently, Yozo Hamaguchi became a member of the Salon d'Automne, an annual Parisian art exhibition that highlighted the latest developments in art, architecture, and design of the 20th century.

Originally completed in black and white, Yozo Hamaguchi began to insert vibrant colors into his mezzoint prints that imbued them with an energetic liveliness.

Yozo Hamaguchi employed non-localized colors as chimneys and edges of the roofs are depicted in blue, white, and light brown hues over blackened structures.

Yozo Hamaguchi's success led to his participation in countless art exhibitions and major art festivals around the world for the remaining decades of his life.

Yozo Hamaguchi had the prestigious honor to serve as a representative of the Japan Pavilion in the 1960 Venice Biennale.

Global enthusiasm for Yozo Hamaguchi's mezzotints led to his selection as the artist to design the official poster for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, to which he incorporated his print Cherries and Blue Bowl.

The Musee Hamaguchi Yozo was established in 1998 as a formal recognition of his contributions to Japanese art.

Historically, most artists who employed mezzotint utilized etching in their creative process, whereas Yozo Hamaguchi preferred to cut lines into a copper plate before he applied acid.

The majority of Yozo Hamaguchi's mezzotints were completed in color, although he designed many prints in black, white, and gray.

Stylistically, Yozo Hamaguchi demonstrated an up-close treatment of his subjects where animals and objects prominently occupy the foreground.

Yozo Hamaguchi remarked that much of Hamaguchi's work was inspired by the European Surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s such as Salvador Dali and Giorgio de Chirico.

The couple moved to Paris in the 1950s after Yozo Hamaguchi decided to continue his career there, and they eventually settled in San Francisco from 1981 to 1996.

Yozo Hamaguchi spent the final years of his life in Tokyo with Minami from 1996 to 2000.

Yozo Hamaguchi died of natural causes on Christmas Day of 2000.

In 1998, Yozo Hamaguchi lived to see the establishment of a museum in his honor at Nihonbashi, Chuo-kan, Tokyo.