This is an exhibition of Keiko Minami (1911-2004), a copper-plate engraver who is in the spotlight in recent years in Japan.  Her works bring back slight loneliness and nostalgia for childhood to many people.  Her main motifs are trees, birds or girls which exist in the boundless sky.  They just exist there, without giving specific message nor refuse anything.  Cool relationship with the viewer might be the secret that one can go into the world of her works at ease.

At this exhibition, approximately 40 works of Keiko Minami of her copper-plate engraving as well as oil paintings from her early stage, and approximately 15 oil paintings of Ichi Ogawa (1922-), who is a lifelong friend of Minami from the time when Minami started as an artist, are displayed.

Minami and Ogawa met at the end of 1940s, at the time of Japanese restoration age after the World War II, when there were not many lady painters.  Both of them had great expectations towards art, and they gathered at the studio of Yoshio Mori, an artist in the Western painting, and talked about their dreams.   They aspiringly submitted their works to the exhibitions held by groups such as Shuyou-Kai cultivating lady painters, and Ogawa started gathering attention as a young painter.

Afterwards, Minami moved to Paris and found her way for a copper-plate engraver, whereas Ogawa remained in Japan and continued her oil paintings, and even now she still submits works every year at Ryuki Ten, a Japanese group exhibition, at her age of over 90 years old.  In her frequently changing style, at one period she painted a lonely scene which seems to reflect the works of Minami, but after 1980’s she mainly paints a big cherry tree as her motif, and continues her work which is remarked as ‘a feeling of wind going through’.

Even though separated across the ocean, their spiritual exchange continued as painters and friends.  Today, nearly after a half century passed, their works are exhibited at the same space.  Please appreciate through their works, two lady painters’ dignified posture that they assiduously depicted their aspiration, heart and soul with their respective expressive style.

Approximately 15 works of Yozo Hamaguchi, who is Minami’s husband, and a world known copper-plate engraver, are also exhibited.