Koichiro Kondo1884~1962 近藤浩一路

Kondo Koichiro (real name: Hiroshi) was a sumi-e (ink painting) artist and cartoonist born on March 20, 1884, in Mutsuai Village, Minamikoma District, Yamanashi Prefecture (now Nanbu Town). He graduated from the Western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1910, where his classmates included his close friend Foujita Tsuguharu. After graduation he joined the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1915 as a cartoonist, drawing political cartoons and illustrations, while in 1919 he was selected for the 6th Inten exhibition of the Japan Fine Arts Academy and turned in earnest to nihonga. His “Six Subjects of Cormorant Fishing,” shown at the 10th Inten in 1923, became a landmark work defining his style; through two trips to France he absorbed Impressionist influences and established a distinctive ink painting idiom that exploited effects of light and shadow.