Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara was a Japanese artist whose body of work includes drawings, murals, sculptures, calligraphy, ink-wash paintings, ceramics, watercolors, and stage designs.

Biography of Jiro Yoshihara

Jiro Yoshihara was born in Osaka in 1905 and was raised in a wealthy and cultured cosmopolitan environment. He displayed artistic talent and a passion for painting from a young age, teaching himself oil painting. Influenced by the humanist ideals of the Shirakabaha literary movement, which also championed post-Impressionist artists like Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Renoir, Yoshihara attended Kitano Secondary School in Osaka and pursued studies in commerce at Kwansei Gakuin University's business college.

In 1925, after contracting tuberculosis, Yoshihara relocated to Ashiya where he became acquainted with local artists. He joined the exhibitions of the painters' group Sōenkai and became a member of Kwansei Gakuin University's painting club Gengetsukai. His debut solo exhibition of oil paintings was held in 1928.

During the 1920s, Yoshihara created paintings, including still-lives, that fused influences from French post-impressionism and early Japanese modern oil painting. By the early 1930s, he embraced a style reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico. Around 1936, Yoshihara began exploring organic and geometric abstraction, inspired by European and British abstract artists. In 1938, alongside fellow avant-garde members of Nika interested in abstraction and Surrealism, Yoshihara co-founded the Kyūshitsukai (Room Nine Society), which organized its own exhibitions.

As the Japanese government escalated its wartime activities in Asia in the late 1930s and implemented oppressive measures against communism and liberalism, which impacted artists as well, Kyūshitsukai halted all activities in 1943. In 1944, Yoshihara, exempted from military service due to a recurrence of tuberculosis.

After World War II ended, Yoshihara promptly became involved in revitalizing the art scene and cultural life not only in the Kansai region but also beyond. Starting around 1946, he began designing posters, products, window displays, murals, and stage sets for operettas, dance performances, open-air concerts, theater productions, and fashion shows.

In 1954, Yoshihara co-founded the Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai (Gutai Art Association) with several of his students and young participants from the Genbi group. For the next 18 years, under Yoshihara's leadership, the Gutai Art Association regularly organized Gutai Art Exhibitions and other innovative art shows, featuring unconventional formats such as outdoor exhibitions and onstage presentations. Embracing these avant-garde formats, Gutai members, including Yoshihara, pioneered radically experimental approaches to artistic production and presentation.

Yoshihara was acknowledged as a pivotal Japanese painter in the early 1950s, with numerous works from both the early postwar era and his Gutai period featured in prominent national and international contemporary art exhibitions. In 1963, he received the Hyogo Prefecture Cultural Prize.

Yoshihara passed away in 1972 due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Following his death, Gutai disbanded in March 1972.