Yozo Hamaguchi

Japanese

1909

2000

Hamaguchi was a printmaker, who was born in Wakayama prefecture in 1909. His family has engaged in soy sauce production since 1645, but Hamaguchi left his family business to pursue sculpture at the Tokyo University of the Arts (formerly known as the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music). He quit the university after 2 years and went to Paris to study oil painting, watercolors, copper-plate engraving. In 1955, he developed the original technique of “mezzotint.”
He won the Grand Prize of the International Printmaking Division at the São Paulo Biennial in 1957, and has been awarded numerous times at various international art exhibitions.Hamaguchi was one of the leading copper-print artists in the world. He moved to San Francisco in 1981 where he continued pursuing his art for 15 years. He finally returned to Japan in 1996. His works were collected by major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, The Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, and National Gallery of Art in Washington.