Hino Gallery is pleased to present "Fuyuno Niji Exhibition: Focusing on Oil Paintings" starting Monday, May 20, 2024.

Fuyuno Niji (1943-2002) was a unique artist who flourished not only in painting but also in a variety of genres such as haiku, free verse, tanka, prose, and lyrics. She was widely associated with leading artists in various fields, including the painter Nakanishi Natsuyuki, the poet Yoshioka Minoru, the haiku poet Nagata Kōi, and the tanka poet Tsukamoto Kunio.
This exhibition will feature six of her early oil paintings and more than a dozen of her later drawings.

Although she expressed herself in a variety of forms, it seems that her interest in dance was always at the center of her contemplation. Among the oil paintings on display this time, her earliest works, Night and Night/Door, both have figures that seem to have been inspired by the dancing human body, and the theme of dancing women can often be found in the drawings. This may reflect the fact that her older sister, eight years her senior, was a modern dancer. Her older sister died young at the age of 33, despite showing excellent talent as a dancer. In a sense, Fuyuno's art has been motivated by the longing for and repose for her sister.
As a consequence of her interest in dance, Fuyuno's works are characterized by their dynamic nature. Fish swim around, kites fly in the air, and even bottles and tableware seem to be on the verge of movement. Her art is commented to be less realistic and more focused on expressing the ritualistic aspects of the dance stage.

Another trend in Fuyuno's art is that she draws inspiration from literary works. Her oil painting The Glass Menagerie was inspired by Tennessee Williams' play of the same name. In her case, the paintings do not serve as illustrations of literature, and the connection between the title and the design is not always clear. The oil painting Donkey's Ears takes its title from a Greek myth in which King Midas's ears were turned into donkey ears by the god Apollo, but the ears are not depicted on the canvas. However, there is a legend that King Midas "turned everything he touched into gold," and she used yellow all over this painting, which is unusual for her, so it may be an allegory for gold.

Until now, Fuyuno Niji's exhibition has only held a drawing exhibition in 2018, and this will be the first time that her art, including oil paintings, will be exhibited extensively.
This May, two books by Fuyuno Niji will be published. These are Donkey's Ears: Fuyuno Niji Art Collection and Fuyuno Niji Poetry and Prose Collection: After Changing the Knitting Sticks to the Color of Fire (both published by Soryusha). This exhibition will be a unique opportunity to understand her world together with these books, so please stop by.