Born in 1948 in Ehimé prefecture, Kyosuke Tchinai is a renowned Japanese artist. Since the 1980s, his work has been exhibited in prestigious museums such as the Tokyo Central Art Museum, the Kuma Art Museum, the Nakata Art Museum, the Ehimé Fine Arts Museum and the National Palace Museum in Beijing, China. Throughout his career, he has won a number of major awards, including the Prix d’Excellence at the Japan Young Painters Exhibition in 1988 and the Yasui Award in 1991.
Tchinai‘s paintings plunge us into the confines of the artist’s boundless imagination, into an ideal, serene nature bathed in a spirituality emanating from the Japanese animist tradition, according to which every element of nature possesses a soul. The majestic cranes twirl under the moon, the rocks seem to come from a natural movement of the world, and the cherry blossoms, struck by the light, reflect a milky transparency.
In recent years, the human figure has disappeared from his canvases. Without losing any of his style, Tchinai‘s art is directly inspired by the tradition of ukiyo-e prints from the Edo period, from which he borrows his fine, delicate line and fantastic atmosphere, as well as the tradition of byobus, Japanese silk screens with vast landscapes and decorations woven in gold leaf.
Lucky cherry tree
Utopia, Hanakaguya, 2021
The arrival of spring in Shimanami
Tchinai‘s paintings mark the meeting of a terrestrial nature of consummate realism with a most singular universe, at times cosmic and dreamlike.
