The World in Ink:
MATSUMOTO HOZAN at 100.
2025.４.26 Sat — 2025. 6. 28 Sat
Here is the PDF.
The Museum of Osaka University is pleased to present The World in Ink: Matsumoto Hozan at 100. Matsumoto Hozan (1925–2010) was born in Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture. She moved to Kobe’s Nada Ward in 1938 at age thirteen; in 1942, four years later, she became a live-in apprentice at the studio of ink painter Matsumoto Shōzan (1886–1970), where she honed her skills under his unrelentingly strict supervision. This marked the beginning of her life as a woman artist, precipitating a career that would see the whole of the world flow through the tip of her brush.
Hozan came of age in Japan’s immediate postwar, entering an artistic community that privileged the avant-garde’s bright colors and conceptual expression over issues of training and technique. This zeitgeist combined with her lingering unfulfilled desire to work in oil caused her to increasingly doubt whether she could truly paint as she wished while confined to the ink medium. Her first trip to the United States in in 1963, however, at thirty-eight years of age, opened to her a whole new creative realm, transforming her practice into a kind of ink painting the world had never seen. In the years and decades that followed, Hozan travelled the globe as a cultural ambassador for both the Japan Foundation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visiting Europe, Brazil, Turkey, and more, performing public painting demonstrations wherever she went. She would even serve as faculty at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, a testament to her worldwide recognition as a contemporary artist. As Hozan’s international success grew, though, so did her affinity for the landscapes of her Japanese home. Lake Biwa, Kamakura, the Imperial Palace, the Shimanto River, even the quiet expanse of the Seto Inland Sea where she had spent her youngest years: these locales became repeated subjects of her compositions, circulating through the very places they depicted by their reproduction in domestic periodicals.
The Museum of Osaka University is the grateful recipient of significant portions of Hozan’s archive. Multiple donations over the years have come to comprise 350 paintings in addition to sketchbooks and scrapbooks, even the very brushes, inkstones, and other tools Hozan used in her daily work. Significantly, these holdings include materials that were rescued from Hozan’s studio in the aftermath of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, traces of a workspace now otherwise completely lost. 2025 marks both what would have been Hozan’s hundredth birthday as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the quake. We hope that this exhibition’s presentation of never-before-seen works might serve as adequate commemoration and preserve Hozan’s legacy for many generations to come.
Place: The Museum of Osaka University, Machikaneyama Shugakukan
*Free admission
Opening Hours:10:30 AM – 5:00 PM (Last entry: 4:30 PM)
Exhibition Period:Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Saturday, June 28, 2025
※ Closed on Sundays and public holidays. However, it will be open on Saturday, May 3, due to the Icho Festival.
※ The exhibition will undergo changes during the exhibition period.
Organizer:The Museum of Osaka University
Cooperation:Imabari Castle, Maya-san Tenjo-ji Temple, Matsumoto Hozan Ink Painting Association,
Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University, Faculty of Letters, Osaka University
Support: The Kobe Shinbun
Exhibition Structure (Tentative)
Prologue: From Bizan to Hozan – The Rigorous Training Period
Chapter 1: HOZAN Awakens – Ink Painting Taking Flight into the World
Chapter 2: Captivated by Serene Landscapes – Rediscovering the Beauty of Japan
Chapter 3: The Pinnacle of Hozan’s Art – The Pianissimo of Ink Tones
Epilogue: The Legacy of Hozan’s Teachings Lives On
Related Events
Museum Lecture
Saturday, May 10 | 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
“The Unique Female Ink Painter: Tracing the Brushstrokes of Matsumoto Hozan”
Lecturer: Yasumasa Oka (Director, Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art/ Kobe Artists Museum)
Place: The Museum of Osaka University, Machikaneyama Shugakukan, 3rd Floor, Seminar Room
Gallery Talk in the Exhibition Room will also be held!
Participation: Free
Capacity: 30 people (Advance registration required, first-come, first-served. If spots are available, same-day participation is possible.)
Registration: Opens on Tuesday, April 1. The registration form will be available here.
Museum Lecture
Saturday, May 17 | 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
“Dialogue Talk: What We Learned from Hozan-sensei”
Speakers:Shinzan Iijima, Seizan Kamitomai, Keizan Sugimoto
(Members of the Matsumoto Hozan Ink Painting Association)
Interviewer: Shoko Haseyama (Research Support Officer, The Museum of Osaka University)
Place: The Museum of Osaka University, Machikaneyama Shugakukan, 3rd Floor, Seminar Room
Participation: Free
Capacity: 30 people (Advance registration required, first-come, first-served. If spots are available, same-day participation is possible.)
Registration: Opens on Tuesday, April 1. The registration form will be available here.
Workshop
Saturday, June 7 | 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
“Simple? Difficult? Try Your Hand at Ink Painting!”
Instructor: Kansai Branch, Matsumoto Hozan Ink Painting Association
Place: The Museum of Osaka University, Machikaneyama Shugakukan, 3rd Floor, Seminar Room
Participation: Free
Eligibility: Elementary school students to adults (Children under elementary school age must be accompanied by a guardian.)
Capacity: 15 people (Advance registration required, first-come, first-served.)
Registration: Opens on Tuesday, April 1. The registration form will be available here.
Note: If you have an inkstone (suzuri), please bring it with you.
Contact Information
The Museum of Osaka University, Machikaneyama Shugakukan
Address:1-20 Machikaneyama-cho, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
Tel: +81-6-6850-6284
Hours: 10:30 AM – 5:00 PM (Closed on Sundays and public holidays)
Concurrent Exhibition!
Hozan’s works will also be exhibited at the Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art !
Matsumoto Hozan & Nakajima Setsuko
—Exploring Abstraction in Japanese and Western Painting—-
Exhibition Period:
Friday, April 11 – Sunday, June 22, 2025
Place: Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art
We encourage you to visit both exhibitions! For more details and access information, please check the museum’s website:
🔗 Kobe City Koiso Memorial Museum of Art
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