Mikuo Konoki, an elderly Japanese painter, sculptor, glass painter and muralist, owns two private galleries in Japan and has painted several large frescos around Japan. He is the representative of Japanese public art and has won for several times the MEXT Prize .

In the year of his 70 years old, Mikuo Konoki is coming to Shanghai with his “Ganda” series by the invitation from Shun Art & Design/Shanghai Gallery where will hold his solo exhibition from 13th to 15th October.

Mikuo Konoki graduated from Department of Painting, Musashino Art University. After the graduation, he went to Italy and accepted further education in Galleria dell’Accademia in Rome. In 1970’s, Mikuo Konoki won the “Tenko” Golden Prize, “Tokyo News Agency” Prize and “Kanagawa Kamakura Mayor” Prize in succession in the Japan Third Civilization Exhibition. It was in 1995 and 1998 that Mikuo Konoki opened his two private galleries: My Art Museum in Nasu Heights and Matsuyama Art Museum in Chiba in Japan. In these days we can see numbers of his oil paintings and “Ganda” sculptures in those two galleries. Moreover, we can also see around 30 large frescos composed by him in temples all over Japan, which firmly established the development of Public Art in Japan.

The “Ganda” sculpture series of Mikuo Konoki is extremely popular world wide. Chiba Gallery in Japan held “Ganda” sculpture exhibition in 2001. The term “Ganda” that is from Japanese dialect means scrap iron which is never interpreted in any Japanese dictionaries.

Mikuo Konoki was adept in describing natural landscape in a liberal style in his early composing life. After that he took expressionism skill and started depicting humans’ and creatures’ looks and gestures and hence he became liberal in colour using. Lately it could be found in his pictures that the lines are becoming succinct and the colour block being clearly divided.

He uses splicing and semiabstract way in order to express his self dissecting and reknowning. In his pictures there are haughty cat, blue fox, doll with angle and skull that means death. You may feel the innocent and joy superficially. But more will you find after your enjoying a trip of Mikuo Konoki’s works, that is the understanding of the truth of life.

Tags：Poem   Life   Ganda   Konoki   Mikuo