Kagaku Murakami1888~1939 村上華岳

Murakami Kagaku (1888-1939) was a major Japanese-style (Nihonga) painter of the Taisho and early Showa eras, born in Kita Ward, Osaka, with the given name Shin’ichi. Sent to live with the Murakami family in Kobe as a child, he later took their surname. He studied under Takeuchi Seiho at the Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting and won acceptance at the 2nd Bunten exhibition in 1908. In 1918 he co-founded the Kokuga Sosaku Kyokai (National Creative Painting Association) with Tsuchida Bakusen, Sakakibara Shiho, Ono Chikkyo, and Nonagase Banka, becoming central to the Nihonga reform movement. After leaving the association in 1926, he lived as a reclusive artist in Hanakuma, Kobe, pursuing a deeply spiritual vision in Buddhist imagery and landscape, until his death from chronic asthma in 1939 at age 52.