Genichiro Inokuma: Life and Career

1902
Genichiro Inokuma is born on December 14 in Nakajin-cho, Takamatsu, the eldest son of his father Hachitaro and mother Masae. Hachitaro has been working as a substitute teacher at an elementary school since about age 17 and later becomes an instructor at a teacher training institute. Masae is also a woman of talent, but she dies of illness in 1917 when Inokuma is 14. Because Hachitaro is transferred often for work, Inokuma must change schools nearly every year.
From childhood, he shows wide-ranging curiosity and is said to have been torn between becoming a painter or an inventor. In first grade, he nearly drowns in the Doki River in Marugame but is rescued by a vendor selling a sweet rice drink. The monument GETA (1991), dedicated to the man who saved him, now stands at the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art.

1921
After graduating from Kagawa Prefectural Marugame Middle School (now Kagawa Prefectural Marugame Senior High School), Inokuma moves to Tokyo. In April of the following year, he enrolls in the Western Painting Department at Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo University of the Arts). His classmates include Ryohei Koiso, Toshio Nakanishi, Kenzo Okada, Takanori Ogisu, Noriyuki Ushijima, and Takeo Yamaguchi – an exceptional concentration of talent for a single cohort. In 1927, these members go on to form the Jotokai group.
In his first year, Inokuma falls ill while home on break and must repeat the year. Boy (1922) reflects his state of mind during that period. After returning to school, he enrolls in Takeji Fujishima’s class. Fujishima looks over the students’ paintings, including Inokuma’s, and offers only one remark: “Your drawing is no good.”*1 In later years, Inokuma recalls that he came to realize drawing means grasping the essence of the subject and assessing whether one truly understands it.

※1. Genichiro Inokuma, Watashi no rerekisho [My Resume], Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art and the MIMOCA Foundation, 2003, p. 56

1926
Inokuma’s painting Portrait of a Woman, for which the model was Fumiko Kataoka, who later becomes his wife, is his first work to be accepted into the Teiten (Imperial Art Academy Exhibition). He continues to be selected in the ensuing years, and in 1929 Portrait of a Sitting Woman and in 1933 Studio each receive a special selection. He is subsequently granted exemption from Teiten screening.

1936
Amid the confusion surrounding the reorganization of the Teiten, Shinseisaku-ha Kyokai (now Shinseisaku Kyokai) is founded as a new association that brings fresh momentum to an art world long bound by convention. Its nine founding members are Genichiro Inokuma, Masayoshi Ise, Ryohei Koiso, Toshio Nakanishi, Yasushi Santa, Kei Sato, Makoto Suzuki, and Kazu Wakita. The supporter and champion of these young artists is Inokuma’s former teacher, Takeji Fujishima.

1938
In May, Inokuma departs for Paris with his wife Fumiko. The journey by sea takes a little over 40 days. For painters of that era, traveling to Paris is not simply a dream come true but a lifelong goal achieved.
At the time, Paris is home to many extraordinary painters. The most important experience of his stay is meeting Henri Matisse and receiving his guidance. Of Matisse’s comments, the one that strikes Inokuma most deeply is, “Your paintings are too skillful.”*2 Underlying these words is Matisse’s belief that painting should not rely on technique alone, but must reveal the artist’s soul on the canvas. This advice becomes a lifelong anchor for Inokuma’s practice.

1939
World War II breaks out. Together with the painter Tsuguharu Fujita and his wife, who are also living in Paris, Inokuma evacuates to the village of Les Eyzies on the outskirts of the city to escape air raids. As the war situation worsens, he returns to Japan in June 1940 aboard the Hakusan Maru, the last evacuation ship to depart. Although his stay in Paris lasts only three years, he challenges himself in many ways and absorbs a great deal. Mademoiselle M (1940), his final work painted there, comes to be regarded as a landmark painting of his realistic period.

1941
Inokuma is sent to China on a cultural inspection mission, and he continues to be dispatched to the front as a war artist until 1943.

1944
He evacuates to Tsukui-gun Yoshino-cho, Kanagawa Prefecture (now Midori-ku, Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture).

1945
After the end of the war, Inokuma opens the Den-en-chofu Pure Art Research Studio and teaches younger artists.

1948
In January, he begins producing cover illustrations for Shosetsu Shincho, work that continues for 40 years until 1987.

1950
Inokuma receives the 2nd Mainichi Art Prize for the mural Democracy (1949) at Keio University and for the mural Birth of Love (1949) in the main hall of Maruei Hotel in Nagoya.
Isamu Noguchi comes to Japan and stays at Inokuma’s home, commuting to Kogei Shidosho (Industrial ArtInstitute) in Tsudayama, Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, where he produces sculptures for his first solo exhibition in Japan. Their friendship continues in New York, Hawaii, Tokyo, and Kagawa, where Noguchi later establishes a studio in Mure-cho, and lasts until Noguchi’s death in 1988.

1951
He completes the mural Freedom at Japanese National Railways Ueno Station (now JR East Ueno Station).

1955
While active on many fronts, Inokuma decides to travel to Paris again to take stock of himself. On the way, however, he stops in New York, is drawn in by the city, and chooses to make a new start there as a painter. New York’s boundless energy, shaped by the lives of countless people, has such a powerful pull that he feels willing to set aside everything he has built until then. He writes, “I want to find my own potential by placing this feeble self in the midst of fierce competition.”*3 It is a bold decision for someone already past 50. His stay in New York lasts 20 years, until illness forces him to close his studio and return to Japan.
During his time in the United States, he is represented by Willard Gallery and holds 10 solo exhibitions. He also takes part in exhibitions at institutions including the Guggenheim Museum.
In New York, Inokuma builds an extensive network of connections and becomes known as something of an unofficial ambassador. He serves on the operating committee of the America-Japan Society, as an advisor to the Consulate-General of Japan in New York, and as an advisor to JETRO (the Japan External Trade Organization).
Many artists live near his studio, and he forms connections with Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Saul Steinberg. Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage also visit his studio.

*3. Genichiro Inokuma, Watashi no Genkai [My Limits: Making Art in New York], Mizue, no. 673, 1961.

1964
At the 6th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, Entrance (A) receives the National Museum of Modern Art Prize. The work, which recalls the patterning of yukata (casual summer kimono) fabric, is inspired by the energy of New York’s cityscape, with its towering high-rise buildings standing in orderly rows.

1973
In November, members of Shinseisaku Kyokai hold a farewell party for Inokuma, who is temporarily back in Japan, but during the gathering he suffers a cerebral thrombosis. When continuing his work in New York becomes difficult, he begins spending each winter in Hawaii two years later. His paintings shift toward what he considers the most fundamental forms in abstraction, the square and the circle. The square conveys geometric stillness, while the circle suggests organic expansion. In Hawaii’s warm, bright climate, his works begin to take on more vivid color.

1980
In November, he receives the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class. Around this time, Inokuma’s interests broaden and turn toward the cosmos. As the years go by, his paintings continue to evolve, becoming ever brighter and more vivid.

1988
His wife, Fumiko, dies. To fill the emptiness left by her loss, he begins painting faces. Over the course of 70 years, his style may seem to have shifted from figuration to abstraction and then back again. However, for Inokuma, “the face is also assembled from abstract forms,” and painting it remains “a pursuit of form.”

1991
In March, Inokuma is named an honorary citizen of Marugame City. In November of the same year, the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art opens.

1993
Inokuma receives the 34th Mainichi Art Prize for the exhibition Happy 90th: Genichiro Inokuma.
On May 17, he dies suddenly at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, aged 90.