Hitoshi Komatsu1902~1989 小松均

Komatsu Hitoshi was a Japanese-style (nihonga) painter born on January 19, 1902, in Oishida, Kitamurayama District, Yamagata Prefecture. From 1928 he settled in the Ohara area near Kyoto, and produced numerous works depicting the local landscape, earning him the nickname "the painter sage of Ohara." He received the Japan Fine Arts Academy Prize at the Inten exhibition in 1946 and was elected an academy member, and won the Minister of Education Prize at the Inten in 1965. In 1975 he received the Minister of Education's Award for the Arts for a series depicting the Mogami River of his hometown, and in 1986 he was designated a Person of Cultural Merit. He died at his Ohara home on August 23, 1989, at age 87, and the Komatsu Hitoshi Museum opened at his former residence in 1990.