Collection: Rikizo Fukao

Gunma Prefecture native Rikizo Fukao (b. 1946) moved to Europe in 1971. He painted on the side while working as a programmer at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, before becoming a full-time artist in 1981. After working for many years in Paris, France, Rikizo felt the need to return to, and reassert more strongly, his Japanese roots. He saw the tokonoma (a built-in recessed space in a Japanese style reception room, in which items for artistic appreciation are displayed) as a symbol of those roots and set out to develop his own form of artistic expression to fill that space.

Fukao seeks to explore new ways of blending a contemporary European approach to painting and printmaking with traditional Japanese craftsmanship, in a unique association of materials and colors. He is known for bold use of reds and blacks, and his works have been shown mainly in Europe since his first solo exhibition in Annecy, south-eastern France, in 1975.