1870 -1949 · Shin-hanga, night landscapes and modern light of Japan

Tsuchiya Koitsu makes rain, moonlight and snow luminous architecture: temples, bridges and shores seem to breathe in the gradients of modern Japanese printmaking.

Born in 1870 near Hamamatsu, Tsuchiya Koitsu moved to Tokyo as a teenager and joined Kobayashi Kiyochika's entourage. He stayed with this master of luminous views for almost nineteen years, from whom he received his artist name. His early work included images related to the Sino-Japanese War, then posters, lithographs and paintings. His great period of landscape prints asserted itself in the early 1930s, when he collaborated with the publisher Watanabe Shôzaburo, before working with Doi Sadaichi and other houses. Koitsu belonged to the shin-hanga movement, which renewed traditional production by associating artist, engraver, printer and publisher. Temples after the rain, bridges at dusk, lanterns, snow and reflections become studies of light for him. The subtle gradations of sky and water never dissolve architecture: on the contrary, they give it a silent, immediately recognizable presence. The "Tsuchiya Koitsu" selection offers its own journey on this subject. His reading favors movement.

At Koitsu, night does not erase the landscape: it reveals, through reflection and glow, what broad daylight sometimes leaves invisible.