Yōzō Hamaguchi

Once considered a major printmaking medium in Europe throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries, the influence and technological ingenuity of photography signaled the end of mezzotint printmaking as a modern reproducible form. However, Hamaguchi valued its emphasis on tonality and texture as expressed in a work's lighting and tactile qualities. His works attained global exposure after Hamaguchi participated in the prestigious São Paulo Biennale in Brazil (1957) and was included in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy (1960). Hamaguchi's legacy is preserved in the Musee Hamaguchi Yozo that possesses much of his prints and it frequently organizes exhibitions centered on his printmaking, alongside works by his wife Keiko Minami and contemporary practitioners of mezzotint printmaking.

Yōzō Hamaguchi studied at Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Work by Yōzō Hamaguchi is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Print Collection.

• Name — Yozo Hamaguchi • Born — April 5, 1909 • Birthplace — Hirogawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan • Died — December 25, 2000 • Place of death — Tokyo, Japan • Monuments — Musee Hamaguchi Yozo: Yamasa Collection • Education — Tokyo University of the Arts (Did not complete) • Known for — Mezzotint Printmaking • Spouse — Keiko Minami (1939 - 2000)

Hamaguchi was born in Hirogawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan to an upper-class family. His father, Gihei, was the 10th President of the Yamasa Corporation, a major soy sauce company. The Hamaguchi family's ties to the soy sauce industry extends as far back as 1645. While the family's wealth mainly derived from their centuries-old business, Hamaguchi's lineage demonstrated a long-held appreciation for the arts as his father was an avid collector of Nanga, Edo-period literati paintings. Additionally, one of Yozo's ancestors, Kansuke Hamaguchi, was a Nanga painter during the late Edo era. From an early age, Hamaguchi desired to pursue a career in the arts instead of the family business. He entered the Tokyo Art School (now Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1927 to study sculpture, but left in 1930 to pursue an independent career. The Yōga style painter Ryuzaburo Umehara advised Hamaguchi to seek artistic training and inspiration in France as this was the means through which he developed his style.

Throughout the 1930s, Hamaguchi lived in Paris where he studied oil painting, watercolor, and copperplate printing. Eventually, Hamaguchi became more intent on a career as an oil painter and regularly created sketches and preparatory drawings for his planned paintings. During this period, Hamaguchi met and befriended the American poet e.e. Cummings, who soon became a great admirer of his sketches. Cummings remarked on the beauty of Hamaguchi's work and added they had the potential to become more aesthetically pleasing in print form. Shortly thereafter, Hamaguchi was introduced to the mezzotint medium after Cummings gifted him with a set of intaglio tools. In 1937, Hamaguchi tried his hand at mezzotint and produced his first image, Cat, in which the titular subject is shown reclining with its front paw extended in an indiscernible white space.

Hamaguchi's newfound artistic inspiration in Paris was interrupted by the start of World War II in 1939, and he subsequently returned to Japan. Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, Hamaguchi further refined his mezzotint style and became a popular figure among Japanese art collectors as mezzotint was not yet familiar in Japan and was still considered a predominantly Western medium. Deemed a pioneer, the art world's enthusiasm for Hamaguchi's prints resulted in his first solo exhibition at the Formes Gallery in Tokyo in 1951. Hamaguchi returned to France in 1953 to market his prints in the Parisian art scene. By then, the majority of his new works were monochrome copperplate etchings executed in gray, black, and white such as Gypsies (1954). His prints appealed to European collectors, and led to his acquisition of multiple prestigious awards in Japan, including the “Best Art Piece” at the Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan. Concurrently, Hamaguchi became a member of the Salon d’Automne, an annual Parisian art exhibition that highlighted the latest developments in art, architecture, and design of the 20th century. The year 1955 was a pivotal year in Hamaguchi's career as he revitalized mezzotint as a modern art medium and developed his signature style. Originally completed in black and white, Hamaguchi began to insert vibrant colors into his mezzoint prints that imbued them with an energetic liveliness. Moreover, he transformed his recognizable subjects of still life and city scenes into simplified, abstracted forms that took on entirely new visual meanings. Roofs of Paris (1956) was one of Hamaguchi's first colored mezzotints, and the innovativeness of his style is evident in the windowless rectangular and trapezoidal buildings that appear stacked or positioned in seemingly infinite rows. He employed non-localized colors as chimneys and edges of the roofs are depicted in blue, white, and light brown hues over blackened structures. Every building appears to emerge from a blackened void, which is a recurring visual motif that pervades most of the prints Hamaguchi later completed. Hamaguchi's success led to his participation in countless art exhibitions and major art festivals around the world for the remaining decades of his life. In 1957, he received the Grant Prize of the International Printmaking Division at the São Paulo Biennial for three prints: Fish and Fruits (1954), Sole (1956), and Two Slices of Watermelon (1954). Hamaguchi had the prestigious honor to serve as a representative of the Japan Pavilion in the 1960 Venice Biennale. Global enthusiasm for Hamaguchi's mezzotints led to his selection as the artist to design the official poster for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, to which he incorporated his print Cherries and Blue Bowl (1976).

Hamaguchi's first major retrospective exhibition in Japan was held in 1985 at the Tokyo Yurakucho Art Forum and The National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka. In 1993, Hamaguchi officially retired from printmaking due to his age and had his dealer/publisher complete his remaining prints. The Musee Hamaguchi Yozo was established in 1998 as a formal recognition of his contributions to Japanese art.

Upon his return to Japan in 1939, Hamaguchi met the artist and author Keiko Minami and later married her. The couple moved to Paris in the 1950s after Hamaguchi decided to continue his career there, and they eventually settled in San Francisco from 1981 to 1996. Hamaguchi spent the final years of his life in Tokyo with Minami from 1996 to 2000.

In 1998, Hamaguchi lived to see the establishment of a museum in his honor at Nihonbashi, Chuo-kan, Tokyo. The Museum's collections comprises a significant body of Hamaguchi's works that cover the entirety of his career along with works by his wife Minami. Since its founding, multiple exhibitions are held each year that highlight specific thematic, stylistic, and formal aspects of Hamaguchi's works. Often, exhibitions will explore the nature of mezzotint printmaking as a medium and display works by Hamaguchi alongside more recent contemporary mezzotint printmakers.

Select Solo Exhibitions 1951: Solo Exhibition - Formes Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 1985: Solo Exhibition - Yurakucho Art Forum, Tokyo, Japan 1999: Hamaguchi Yozo - Monochrome Works - Sakura City Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan Select Group Exhibitions 1957: Sao Paulo Biennale - São Paulo, Brazil 1957: 1st International Biennial Print Exhibition - Tokyo, Japan 1960: Japan Pavilion - Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2004: Japanese Masters of Mezzotint - Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, Massachusetts 2011: Contemporary Mezzotints - Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington 2012: Renewal and Revision: Japanese Prints of the 1950s and 60s - Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 2012: Art of Darkness: Japanese Mezzotints from the Hitch Collection - Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 2016: The Culture of Wine, Masters of Printmaking from the Vivanco Collection - Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Bilbao, Spain 2017: Recollections - Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan 2018: Like a Face - Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan 2019: An Inner Landscape - Landscapes and Memories - Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan 2021: Rich Black Exhibition - Bunkamura Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Retrospectives 1983: Retrospective - Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco, California 1985: Retrospective - The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan 1988: Retrospective of Prints and Studies - Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan 1998: Retrospective with Keiko Minami - Tokyu-Kichijoji Department Store, Musashino, Japan 2002: Master Print-Maker of the 20th Century - Hamaguchi Yozo 2018: Yozo Hamaguchi: Master of the Mezzotint - Museum of Art, DeLand, DeLand, Florida 2020: Happiness on the Horizon: The Copperplate Prints of Yozo Hamaguchi - Musee Hamaguchi Yozo/Yamasa Collection, Tokyo, Japan

• Year — Title — Medium • 1937 — Cat — Drypoint • 1954 — Spanish Oil Bottle — Mezzotint • 1954 — Fish and Fruits — Mezzotint • 1954 — Two Slices of Watermelon — Mezzotint • 1956 — Roofs of Paris — Color Mezzotint • 1959 — Ears of Corn and Lemon — Mezzotint • 1976 — Cherries and Blue Bowl — Color Mezzotint • 1980 — Patrick's Cherry — Color Mezzotint • 1985 — Bottles with Lemon and Red Wall — Color Mezzotint • 1985 - 1992 — Green Field — Color Mezzotint • 1988 - 1990 — 22 Cherries series — Color Mezzotint

Yōzō Hamaguchi was recorded at birth as 濱口 陽三. The authorities additionally record the headings Yozo Hamaguchi, Youzou Hamaguchi and Yôzô Hamaguchi. He was the child of Gotō Hamaguchi. He married Keiko Minami.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; The British Museum, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Wakayama Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama; Musee Hamaguchi Yozo/Yamasa Collection, Tokyo; Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphia; University of Alberta, Canada.