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

This comprehensive retrospective of scholar-artist Fukuda Kodōjin will close this Sunday, July 23rd at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  Kodōjin continued the tradition of Japanese literati painting (nanga) after 1900. His 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 in the United States and Europe.

To view the exhibition, click here.