Yamatane Museum of Art NIHONGA AWARD: Seed 2024
― Meet the Future of Nihonga ―
The Yamatane Museum of Art is delighted to present Yamatane Museum of Art NIHONGA AWARD: Seed 2024, a juried public-entry exhibition aimed at discovering and encouraging excellent artists working in new creative directions in nihonga.
Yamatane Museum of Art instituted the Yamatane Museum of Art Prize as part of its efforts to encourage and promote nihonga, modern Japanese painting. That Prize exhibitions was held fourteen times, every other year between 1971 and 1997. In 2016, to celebrate the fiftieth year since our museum’s founding, we restarted the Yamatane Museum of Art Prize exhibitions as Yamatane Museum of Art NIHONGA AWARD: Seed.
For this exhibition, we received 153 entries from people living all over Japan and from a wide range of ages, from 20 to 47 years old.
The strict judging process resulting in awarding the Grand Prize to Kitagawa Akiko for Whispers—Connecting Lives, the Prize for Excellence to Shigemasa Shuhei for Wintersweet, the Special Prize (Presented by Seiko Holdings Corporation) to Hayakawa Miki for Pages, and the Special Prize (Presented by Orient Corporation) to Maeda Akane for Yamasakura. In addition, six entrants were elected for Encouragement Prizes: Ōmura Mirei, Kawamura Katsuki, Kotani Rina, Kobari Asuka, Nakamura Utena and Hachiya Mayumi.
This exhibition presents the forty-five works that were nominated for awards, including these prize-winning works. We hope that you will sense the infinite possibilities of nihonga from these energy-packed, compelling works by up-and-coming artists.
During the exhibition, works from our collection that are superb examples of modern nihonga will also be displayed. These artists who have made their mark on history, also created these works when they were in their twenties to their forties, just like those who submitted work for this public-entry exhibition. Please enjoy comparing their paintings with this year’s award-winning works.
Main works
Grand Prize: Kitagawa Akiko, Whispers—Connecting Lives, 2023
Prize for Excellence: Shigemasa Shūhei, Wintersweet, 2023
Murakami Kagaku, Nude [Important Cultural Property], 1920; Yamatane Museum of Art
Kawai Gyokudō, Cormorant Fishing, 1895; Yamatane Museum of Art
