Sixty Years of Faith and Poetry - Sculpture by Funakoshi Yasutake

31 July - 29 August 1993

Hours: 9:30a.m.- 5:00 p.m.
Entry is permitted thirty minutes before the galleries are closed.
Closed: Closed on Mondays

Admission: charged

It is said that after the war figurative sculpture in Japan reached a peak under Shin Hongo, Yoshitatsu Yanagihara, Churyo Sato and Yasutake Funakoshi. This can be taken to mean that modern sculpture in Japan, which was originated by Morie Ogiwara and Kotaro Takamura, both of whom were influenced by Rodin, matured and reached a stage of completion under these four artists. Opposing the academicism which could be seen thus far in govemment-sponsored exhibitions, Yasutake Funakoshi, belonging to the trend which was called the genealogy of “lifeism”? occupied his own unique position within that trend.

As displayed by Funakoshi’s work, including “The 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki”, “Hara-no-Jo”, “Damian of Molokai Island”, numerous figures of the women saints, “Sakutaro Hagiwara”, “Young Takuboku Ishikawa” and his “Fish” series through his revered Catho1ic faith, his lucid poetic feeling and his strong spirit for creating sculpture, he has produced a large number of excellent works of art of a high level of purity. He is recognized as the first artist in Japan to genuinely sculpt in marble, and he is also known for excelling even sculpting in sandstone, having produced excellent work as a pioneer in a new field of sculpture.

In this exhibition we are attempting to retrace the tracks of sixty years of Funakoshi’s work, which ranges from “Mr. N” (1933), which is his earliest existing work, to “Study-IV”, and which consists of 81 pieces of sculpture and 56 rough sketches, and to discover the world of Yasutake Funakoshi’s art.

We received a great amount of help from Yasutake Funakoshi and his family in organizing this exhibition. In closing, we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the art museums and private collectors which have lent us work, as well as to the many people who have helped in our efforts to discover the whereabouts of certain works, to the co-sponsor Kao Corporation, and to all of the other people involved in the organization of this exhibition.