Kayama Matazô was born in Kyoto in 1927. In 1949 he graduated from the Nihon-ga department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and he rapidly established himself as a painter. In 1973 he won the Grand Prize of Japan, in 1988 he became a professor at the Tokyo University of Arts. At his death in 2004 he had become one of the grand old men of Japanese painting.
