Fukuda Kodōjin, Blue-green Landscape, February 1926 (detail), hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture 2013.29.902

Fukuda Kodōjin: Japan’s Great Poet and Landscape Artist

Fukuda Kodōjin: Japan’s Great Poet and Landscape Artist

April 22, 2023 - July 23, 2023
Galleries 237, 238, 239, 251, 252, 253
Free Exhibition

Fukuda Kodōjin (1865–1944) was one of a handful of scholar-artists who continued the tradition of Japanese literati painting (nanga) after 1900. Kodōjin’s painting style is characterized by bizarrely shaped mountain forms rendered in vivid color or monochromatic ink that often include a solitary scholar enjoying the expansive beauty of nature. Not only a painter, Kodōjin was also an accomplished poet and calligrapher patronized by influential industrialists and politicians of the era. Following his death, he slipped into obscurity, and today is better appreciated outside his native Japan. This is the first-ever exhibition of Kodōjin outside Japan, accompanied by a 344-page catalogue.

Fukuda Kodōjin, Blue-green Landscape, February 1926 (detail), hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture 2013.29.902