Kazuyuki Futagawa - Winter Scenery at Oirase (奥入瀬冬景)

"Winter Scenery at Oirase" depicts the snow-laden forest along the Oirase Gorge in Aomori, northern Japan—a subject Kazuyuki Futagawa has returned to throughout his career as a defining personal theme. Painted in mineral pigments on paper in the Nihonga tradition, the work captures the hushed atmosphere of deep winter through delicate gradations of blue-grey and ivory. Dark trunks rise through veils of fresh snow, their slender branches reaching across the composition, while the gentle curve of a dark, mirror-like stream balances the dense vertical rhythm of bare trees. Trained under the celebrated Nihonga master Ikuo Hirayama at the Tokyo University of the Arts, Futagawa is recognized as a leading realist landscape painter of his generation. The painting bears the artist's brush signature and red square seal at the lower left, and the original frame retains the artist's hand-inscribed paper label on the reverse.