Kazuko Shiihashi椎橋和子
A life in Japanese painting.
Biography
Born in Tokyo in 1955, Kazuko Shiihashi studied textile and kimono design at Nihon Design School and Japanese painting at Musashino School of Art.
Her international exhibition history spans New York, Paris, Cologne, London and Toronto. INORI’s profile records a collection of her work at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy in 2014.
- 2002–2003
Cast Iron Gallery, New York
- 2004–2007
Exhibitions in Paris, including Galerie Cathay and Espace Culturel Bertin Poirée
- 2007
Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt, Cologne
- 2008–2022
Recurring exhibitions at Galerie Matthieu Dubuc, Rueil-Malmaison
- 2015
Fourth place in the painting category, Florence Biennale
- 2016
Special award, Toronto COMMFFEST International Art Exhibit
- 2017–2022
Kamal Bankhshi, Modern Asian Art, London
A world held in colour and gold.
Shiihashi studied textile and kimono design before Japanese painting. INORI lists mineral pigments, gold and silver leaf among the materials of her panel paintings. Their luminous surfaces sit within the material tradition of nihonga: Japanese painting made with pigments, ink and, often, metal leaf.
The name nihonga emerged in the Meiji era to distinguish Japanese painting from Western oil painting; its materials and practices reach much further back. Blossoms, autumn foliage and the moon also belong to a long history of seasonal imagery in Japanese poetry and art, where beauty is closely bound to the passage of time. This is a cultural context for looking at Shiihashi’s paintings, rather than a fixed explanation of their meaning.
In the artist’s world.
