Kōshirō Onchi

The recorded working language is Japanese. Places of work recorded in the authority are Tokyo. Work by Kōshirō Onchi is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, National Museum of World Cultures and Print Collection.

Onchi came from an aristocratic family that had close connections with the imperial family. As a child, he received the same kind of education that a prince received. Onchi was trained in both traditional calligraphy and modern western art. Onchi's father, Tetsuo Onchi, was himself a calligrapher, painter and scholar of Chinese studies, and served as tutor to three young princes who were to marry daughters of the Emperor Meiji. Onchi completed elementary school at Bancho in 1904, then attended a school for German studies in Tokyo in 1909; after failing the entrance examination for the Daiichi Kōtōgakkō, he studied oil painting at the Aoibashi branch of the Hakubakai Yōga Kenkyūsho. In December 1909 he sent the painter Takehisa Yumeji his impressions of Takehisa's recently published book Yumeji Gashū - Haru no Maki, the beginning of the contact that, between 1910 and 1915, encouraged him to study oil painting and sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. After contacts with Takehisa Yumeji in 1909, between 1910 and 1915, he studied oil painting and sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (東京美術学校, Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō). In 1912, he founded the print and poetry magazine called "Tsukubae". Onchi was also a book designer in the early days when it was impossible for sōsaku-hanga artists to survive by just doing creative prints. He designed over 1000 books in his career. In 1928 he joined with seven other sōsaku hanga artists to work on the 100 Views of New Tokyo series, to which he contributed thirteen prints. He was described as having the most "forceful personality" of the group, with the "widest intellectual interests and the deepest intellectual convictions." In 1939, he founded the First Thursday Society (一木会, Ichimokukai), which was crucial to the postwar revival of the sōsaku-hanga movement. The society held artist gatherings once a month in Onchi’s house. Members such as Gen Yamaguchi (1896–1976) and Sekino Jun'ichirō (1914–1988) discussed subjects of prints. The American connoisseurs Ernst Hacker, William Hartnett and Oliver Statler also attended. The First Thursday Collection (一木集, Ichimoku-shū), a collection of prints by members to circulate to each other, was produced in 1944. Through the First Thursday Society, Onchi provided aspiring young artists with resources and comradeship during the war years when resources were scarce and censorship severe. Like many artists, Onchi was conscripted into national service during the Second World War; from 1942 he served as president of the Nihon Hanga Hōkokai and took part in the collaborative print series Tokyo Kaiko Zue in an attempt to revitalize woodblock printing in the immediate postwar period. After the war, he emerged as the leader of the sōsaku-hanga movement that flourished in the international art scene. The 1951 São Paulo Biennial marked a decisive step in gaining recognition for the movement within Japan itself."

Onchi's works are held in several museums worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Smart Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.