Black Birds

Title	Black Birds
Artist	加山又造　KAYAMA Matazo
Date	1957
Medium	color on paper
Dimensions	212.5×151.5
Classification	Japanese-style Paintings
Accession Number	JJ198000003000
Summary	Amid the bleakness and confusion of the postwar period, Kayama’s work, with its acute sensitivity, reflected the conditions of the age. It attracted attention for opening up new possibilities for expression in Japanese-style painting. The series of paintings with which he made his debut in the art world in the 1950s actively incorporated and assimilated the techniques of Western art. In them, one can see a structured, stylized pictorial space created through the tension between Western realism and the decorativeness characteristic of Japanese art. This painting also dates from that period. The forms of the crows flocking and fighting in the center of the picture are rendered in extremely simplified shapes, while the intersecting lines in the background form a composition based on a rational arrangement. Both the crows and the lines show a consistent tendency toward stylized beauty through simplification, yet the picture gives a striking, tension-filled impression that directly conveys the artist’s psychological state.

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Native place	Kyoto, JPN
Birth	1927
Dead place	Tokyo,JPN
Died	2004
Biography	Kayama was born in Kyoto. After attending the Kyoto Municipal School of Fine Arts and Crafts (now Hiyoshigaoka High School), he graduated from the Japanese-style painting section of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1949 and studied under Yamamoto Kyujin. The following year, his work was accepted for the first time at the 2nd Sozo-bijutsu Spring Exhibition, where he received the Research Prize. He also showed with the Shinseisaku-kyokai when it was formed through the merger of Sozo-bijutsu and the Shinseisakuha-kyokai, and with the Soga-kai when it broke away from the Japanese-style painting section of Shinseisaku in 1974. His ambitious painting style was an attempt to unify realism and decorative qualities. His creative work included prints, crafts, and various kinds of design as well as Japanese-style painting. In all these fields, he created a sophisticated formal beauty that was highly original. In 1973, he won the Japan Art Grand Prize, and in 1980 the Art Selection Minister of Education Prize.

Black Birds

KAYAMA Matazo