Leiko Ikemura
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is a Japanese-Swiss artist who works in a variety of mediums, including
oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...
,
sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
, and
watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...
. She divides her time between
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
and
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, teaching painting at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Active on the international art scene since the 1970s, she is known for her work within the
Neo-Expressionism Neo-expressionism is a style of Late modernism, late modernist or early-Postmodern art, postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called ''Transavantgarde'', ''Junge Wilde'' or ''Neue Wild ...
movement of the 1980s, as well as her continually evolving style. Much of her oeuvre features elements of symbolism, involving the creation of magical universes blend elements of her animals, humans, and plants. Her work has been featured in a number of solo exhibitions in Japan and Europe, and is held in the permanent collections of major institutions such at the
Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
, Kunstmuseum Basel, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthaus Zurich, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In 2023, she had her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan.


Biography

Leiko Ikemura studied at Osaka University from 1970 to 1972, majoring in Spanish. She then left Japan to study in Spain from 1973 to 1978 at the Academia de Bellas Artes in
Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...
and
Seville Seville ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Guadalquivir, ...
. In 1979, Ikemura moved to
Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
to pursue a career as an artist. Her first solo exhibition in a public institution took place in 1983 at the , in Bonn, Germany. That same year, she received the Stadterichnerin von Nurnberg, an artist residency facilitated by Faber-Castell and the City of
Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
. A year later, the artist relocated to Germany, moving to
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
in 1984 and then Cologne in 1986, where she developed an interest in sculpture and began experimenting with mediums such as
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...
and
ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...
. In 1991, Ikemura became a professor of painting at the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. Leiko Ikemura lives and works in Berlin and
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
. Since 2014, she has also held a professorship at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in Tokyo. She has identified Japan and Switzerland as both feeling like "home," and in addition to her native Japanese is fluent in Spanish, German, and English.


Work and Themes

Ikemura's work spans a variety of mediums, from drawing to painting to sculpture to video. While the use of these mediums overlap throughout the course of her career, her oeuvre can also be loosely divided into epochs that place focus on central themes, subjects, and materials. She and critics have cited early influences on her work such as
Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...
,
Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...
, Goya,
El Greco Doménikos Theotokópoulos (, ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco (; "The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. ...
, and
Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
. However, her work is largely regarded to have transcended these influences, fusing them with elements of
radical feminism Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other ...
, restrained historical commentary, and
mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute (philosophy), Absolute, but may refer to any kind of Religious ecstasy, ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or Spirituality, spiritual meani ...
, and making it "difficult to differentiate the Japanese and European aspects of erwork."


Early Work: Drawings

Ikemura first began her career in Switzerland primarily with drawing. Though she has continued to work in other mediums since, critics have stressed that her drawings have always been complete and individual works in themselves rather than preliminary sketches for later paintings or sculptures. Ikemura herself has expressed a particular emotional affinity with the medium of drawing, describing it a "immediate and honest," with this honesty being a crucial tenet to her work and lifestyle. She has also noted the vast stylistic potential of the medium and how this is manifested in her drawings throughout the course of the career. "There must be a hundred different possibilities of treating drawings," she said in 2019 interview, "and sometimes people think there are a hundred different people in me, because my drawings from each period are so distinctive."


A Turn Towards Painting: Landscape, Triptychs, and Transcultural Elements

In the early 1980s, Ikemura noticed a shift in her work. Working in Germany amongst other "wild painters," she found that her strokes had become aggressive, and the themes increasingly violent. Seeking to gain some space to regroup and start afresh, she went on a retreat to the Swiss Alps, where she began to do some work with landscape painting. Starting in the 1990s, she began to experiment with both small paintings, to focus more closely on specific subject matter, as well as larger-scale triptychs. Ikemura's triptychs consist largely of landscape elements, fusing imagery from European landscapes Japanese landscape imagery. They incorporate both natural scenery and animal subjects. Art critics and historians have surmised that her choice of the triptych is in part an act of cultural translation, another subtle incorporation of transnational religious/spiritual elements that imbues the work with the sense of abstraction and multiplicitous interpretative potential that Ikemura's artistic universe is so known for. The triptych is a format used by European painters throughout history, often to depict religious scenes or narratives. Ikemura's triptychs, in contrast, do not evoke this subject matter, and there is often no clear visual linkage between the separate panels in terms of subject; however, the use of the format still creates this subliminal association. In her work ''Genesis'', Ikemura makes this association even clearer; while the landscape depicted is of the Tōkaidō, an
Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...
road that spanned from present-day Tokyo to
Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
, the title of the work links the historical Japanese trade route with the biblical story, creating a compelling, though abstract visual narrative.


Girl Motif

The motif of the young girl first became prevalent in Ikemura's work in the early '90s, and has since been a recurring subject in her oeuvre. Ikemura explained one of her reasons for the choice of this motif in a 2011 interview: "When women are represented in art, they are women as seen by men. That's why I feel it is a crucial task for me to depict females, at the ambiguous and uneasy age when women are formed, as subjects rather than objects." Feeling herself that she was taught to grow up and leave childhood behind quickly due to this societal model of girl/womanhood, Ikemura seeks to push back against stereotypical depictions of girls in popular culture (in both Japan and beyond) as meek, helpless, decorative, and sexualized. Such subversions of these models can be seen across her work, including her terracotta "Cabbage Heads" from 2015 onward, her oil paintings of a subject called "Miko" in the 90s, and her recent tempera portraits. In addition to images of girlhood, tensions and conflict between mothers and their children also appear frequently in Ikemura's work.


Rabbit Imagery, Tohoku Earthquake, and Usagi Kannon

In recent decades, the motif of the
rabbit Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also includes the hares), which is in the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). They are familiar throughout the world as a small herbivore, a prey animal, a domesticated ...
has featured prominently in Ikemura's work, in both her drawings, paintings, and sculpture. In line with other prevailing elements of her craft, the rabbit has been chosen in part as a subject because of the many experiences and interpretations it affords: the rabbit features prominently in Japanese folk literature as synonymic with the moon. It is also a prevalent theme in European art history, featured in the works of artists like
Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...
and
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer ( , ;; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, Old master prin ...
. Adding to this ontological complexity, it has also appeared as a symbol of
fertility Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate ...
in folklore around the world and is a major figure in
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...
's ''
Alice in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...
'', a book featuring a similar kind of abstract, dreamlike universe to that created by Ikemura's works. Ikemura was deeply affected by the aftermath of the March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, and in response created the first largescale ''Usagi Kannon''. This sculpture, standing over 3 meters in height, depicted a hybrid of a rabbit and the Mother Kannon (the Japanese
Bodhisattva In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has attained, or is striving towards, '' bodhi'' ('awakening', 'enlightenment') or Buddhahood. Often, the term specifically refers to a person who forgoes or delays personal nirvana or ''bodhi'' in ...
of Compassion). The lower half of the figure was hollow, so that viewers could enter the work itself and feel a sense of protection and healing. Variations of the ''Usagi Kannon'' have since appeared in a number of public spaces and institutions, including in
Valencia Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...
, a train station in Recklinghausen, the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Shizuoka, Kunstmuseum Basel, and the foyer of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne. The variations in Ikemura's sculptural works result both from conscious artistic choices, such as variations in materials used and placement of features of the figures, but also as capitalizations upon incidental imperfections in the artistic process. Comparing her to a musician, Kosme de Barañano y Letamendía writes: "Ikemura sees no imperfections in the casts or in the cast iron that has not yet fully cooled: If she notices a flaw, a metal burr or an air bubble, she immediately sees the opportunity to re-orchestrate, to add another chord, to complete her jam session."


Exhibitions (selection)

* 2010: "Leiko Ikemura. August-Macke-Preisträgerin 2008", Sauerland-Museum-Arnsberg, Germany * 2011: "Leiko Ikemura: Transfiguration", The National Museum of Modern Art, MOMAT, Tokyo, Japan * 2012: "Leiko Ikemura. Korekara or the Serenity of Fragile Being", Museum of Asian Art, Berlin, Germany * 2013: "Leiko Ikemura. i-migration",
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe The Staatliche Kunsthalle (State Art Gallery) is an fine art museum in Karlsruhe, Germany. Its collection consists of works by mainly German, French, Flemish and Dutch masters from the past eight centuries. The museum was conceived in the early ...
, Germany * 2014: "Leiko Ikemura: PIOON", Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Nagaizumi, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan * 2015/16: "All about Girls and Tigers. Leiko Ikemura", Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln, Germany * 2016: "Leiko Ikemura. ...and suddenly the wind turns", Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Germany * 2017: "Ikemura und Nolde", Kunstmuseum Ahrenshoop, Germany * 2018: "Im Atelier Liebermann: Leiko Ikemura im Dialog mit Donata und
Wim Wenders Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker and photographer, who is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, Venice International Film ...
", Stiftung Brandenburger Tor – Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin * 2019: "Leiko Ikemura Our Planet – Earth & Stars", The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan * 2019: "Leiko Ikemura – Toward New Seas", Kunstmuseum Basel, Schwitzerland * 2020: "Leiko Ikemura – In Praise of Light", St.-Matthäus-Kirche, Berlin, Germany * 2021: "Leiko Ikemura – Usagi in Wonderland", Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, Great Britain * 2021: "Leiko Ikemura: Here we are/Aquí Estamos", Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, Valencia, Spain * 2022: "Leiko Ikemura: Wenn Pfauen Flügel öffnen", Herbert Gerisch-Stiftung, Neumünster, Germany


Books

* "Leiko Ikemura. Our Planet. Earth & Stars イケムラレイコ 土と星" authors: Mitsue Nagaya, Anita Haldemann, Michiko Kasahara, Stefan Kraus, Wim Wenders, Udo Kittelmann, Atsushi Tanaka, Toshiyuki Horie, Kenjiro Hosaka, editors: Mitsue Nagaya, Mina Hisamatsu, Shiori Takano * "u mi no ko" (jap) poems and drawings by Leiko Ikemura, The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Akaaka (Japan), * "andalusia" authors:
John Yau John Yau (born June 5, 1950) is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, ficti ...
, Leiko Ikemura, Weidle Verlag, * "Leiko Ikemura: Sculpture, painting, drawing" authors: Hans-Jürgen Schwalm, Wilfried Dickhoff
Britta E. Buhlmann
Elisabeth Bronfen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen * "beyond the horizon" de, en, jap, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art; T. Kitagawa, editors: Fölbach, Dietmar * "Leiko Ikemura" authors: Udo Kittelmann
Friedemann MalschNoemi Smolik
editor: Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, Cologne, Milano * "Leiko Ikemura" authors
Gerard A. GoodrowFriedeman MalschAlexander Pühringer
Cantz, * "Alpenindianer" authors: Leiko Ikemura

editor: Satani Gallery, Tokyo * "Hundertundelf Haiku" authors: Matsuo Bashō, 22 drawings from Leiko Ikemura, editor: Amman Verlag, Zurich * "Leiko Ikemura: Gemälde, Zeichnungen 1980–1987", authors
Dieter Koepplin
Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Basel) * "Der stumme Schrei" authors:
Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issue ...
, Leiko Ikemura, editor (Nobel Prize Edition): Coron Verlag (CH) * "Shadows" authors: Leiko Ikemura, editor: Johan Jonker, Amsterdam et Gabriele Rivet, Cologne * "Leiko Ikemura" authors: Curt Heigl
Anton Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell
Kunsthalle Nürnberg * "Ancestors" authors: Leiko Ikemura, edition, Kunstverein St. Gallen, (CH) * "Wild cats and domestic cats" authors: Leiko Ikemura, 61 drawings, Edition Stähli, Zurich


References


External links

*
Leiko Ikemura in the "open library"
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ikemura, Leiko Contemporary painters 21st-century Japanese painters Japanese ceramists 21st-century Swiss painters Swiss sculptors 20th-century Japanese sculptors 21st-century Japanese sculptors 1951 births Living people Japanese women ceramists People from Tsu, Mie Swiss women ceramists Swiss ceramists Japanese women sculptors Swiss women sculptors Japanese women painters Swiss women painters 20th-century Swiss women artists 21st-century Swiss women artists 21st-century ceramists Swiss contemporary artists Japanese contemporary artists Neo-expressionist artists 20th-century women sculptors 21st-century women sculptors