Kojin Kudo - Autumn Reverie (秋思)
Kojin Kudo - Autumn Reverie (秋思)
| Artist | Kojin Kudo (Japan, 1915-2011) |
| Year | 1915-2011 |
| Materials | Mineral pigments on paper (nihonga) |
| Size | (H)33.3cm, (W)45.5cm |
| Framed Size | (H)56.4cm, (W)68.5cm, (D)6.0cm |
| Rarity | Unique |
| Medium | Painting |
| Signature | Signed in sumi ink at lower right with the artist's red seal below. Signed and titled paper label affixed to the frame reverse. |
| Condition and Authenticity | Overall good condition. Pigment surface clean and stable, no visible loss or repair. Light toning to the upper reverse of the frame. This artwork does not include a certificate of authenticity; it retains a paper label titled, signed and sealed by the artist on the frame reverse. |
| Provenance | Auction in Japan |
| Frame | Framed in a gilt-lined wooden frame with a linen-covered mat and glazing. Outer storage box and yellow protective cloth bag included. |
A hushed autumn field at the end of the day. A slender marten checks its stride and turns to face us, blue eyes wide above a snow-white mask, its long body still half hidden in the ochre grasses. Above it, an akebia vine has split open to show its dark seeds; below, a drift of wild white asters keeps flowering as the season closes. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is the point: the title names the particular pensiveness that autumn brings, and the whole picture is tuned to it.
Kojin Kudo (1915-2011) spent a long career on exactly this register. Born to a farming family in Hirosaki in Aomori, the snow country of northern Japan, he moved to Tokyo in 1934, studied at the Kawabata Painting School and then under Toyoshiro Fukuda, and after the war became one of the leading voices in the movement to renew Japanese-style painting, helping to found the Sogakai group in 1974 and teaching as professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. Critics have long noted the unlikely pairing behind his work: the small plants, insects and animals of the Tsugaru countryside he watched as a boy, rendered with the visionary charge he found in Hieronymus Bosch and William Blake. His awards include the Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (1988) and the Mainichi Art Award (1992), and his work is held by the Aomori Museum of Art and the Hiratsuka Museum of Art.
Painted in mineral pigments on paper in the traditional nihonga technique, the surface here rewards close looking: powdered pigment laid in soft, breathing gradations for the mist, dry brushwork for the grasses, and thick opaque white built up petal by petal for the asters. The animal's fur is drawn in fine single-hair strokes over a warm cream ground. It is a small, intimate painting made to be lived with rather than declaimed - a quiet encounter between one creature and one moment of the year.