Maeda Tôshirô (1904 - 1990)

Maeda Tôshirô was born in Akashi City, in Hyôgo prefecture. He was an Osaka man most of his life. In 1927 he graduated at the Kobe Higher Business school, and entered a company as a commercial artist. He taught himself hanga techniques by working with linoleum. Later he switched to woodblocks, but he kept making linoleum prints (often using oil paints) throughout his career. In the years before WWII he was an active member of the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai and of other artists' groups, e.g. the Shun'yôkai ("Spring Principle Association"), which had been founded by Morita Tsunetomo and Yamamoto Kanae (a.o.) in 1922 and which promoted Western-style painting.
During WWII he lived in Manchuria, working at the Northeast Asia Cultural Development Centre. After the war he resumed his career, contributing to numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. Among others he was represented at the Tokyo International Print Biennale in 1957, 1960 and 1962.