Kawasaki Tsuyoshi (1942-2023)
We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of ceramic artist Kawasaki Tsuyoshi on March 13, 2023. At Tokyo University of the Arts, he studied ceramics under Living National Treasures Fujimoto Yoshimichi Nōdō (1919-92) and Tamura Kōichi (1918-87). While there, he met and married fellow student Koike Shōko, a gallery artist familiar to many, with whom he collaborated on numerous joint shows.
Rather than follow in the footsteps of his teachers and pursue polychrome enameling and patterning, Kawasaki chose instead to create entrancing architectural sculptures. His quietly powerful works resembled ancient homes, village scenes, or streets, but were abstracted geometrically to create evocations of those structures.
Kawasaki was born in Miyazaki Prefecture in 1942. His work was exhibited at galleries in Japan continuously throughout his career. In 1983, his work was featured in Japanese Ceramics Today at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and which traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He was featured in a two-person exhibition, Ceramic Towns and Sculptural Basketry: Kawasaki Tsuyoshi and Sekine Sumiko, at the Musée Tomo, Tokyo in 2014 and in a two-person museum exhibition with painter Yano Shizuaki at the Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum in 2018. Museum collections that hold his work include the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Musée Tomo; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. Our thoughts are with Koike Shōko and their family at this difficult time. He will be missed.
