Nakagawa, Kigen 中川 紀元
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Saru Gallery
       Japanese Prints & Japanese Paintings


Biography Nakagawa, Kigen 中川 紀元 (1892 - 1972)

Kigen Nakagawa was born in Nagano Prefecture. After finishing Suwa Prefectural High School he enrolled in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1912. Disappointed, he returned to his home town the following year, where he became an elementary school teacher.
In 1915 he was back, studying western-style painting. Two of his teachers were Ishii Hakutei and Masamune Tokusaburô. In 1919 he was selected to travel abroad. He went to France and studied with Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and André Lhote (1885-1962) until 1921.
Keywords with respect to this period were "respect of one's own painting tradition" and "natural simplification". Kigen Nakagawa is said to have been devoted to Matisse.
On his return to Japan he exhibited with the Nikakai, the Nika Association, a prestigious art organisation, founded in 1914 (and still in existence today), which represents and supports contemporary Japanese artists abroad through global exchange. Nakagawa Kigen and Yabe Tomoe, who had been with him in France, advocated the new styles they had learned abroad, and this caused tension within the Nikakai. Together with a few other painters they seceded and they formed a group called "Action", which in its turn dispersed in 1924.
In 1922 Nakagawa Kigen published Pikaso to ritsutaiha (Picasso and Cubism), which demonstrates that he really was an avant-garde artist.
After the war he helped found the Dai Nikakai.
His work shows strong influences of Matisse, but he also worked in the Japanese manner.

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