Rikizo FUKAO

Japanese　1946

Rikizo Fukao was born in Gunma Prefecture in 1946. He used to work as a salary man for years after he graduated from the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. Fukao started to paint at the age of 24, he moved to Paris in 1971. He has been active in Europe as an artist while working as a programmer in Geneva, Switzerland. He was awarded with an atelier in Paris by the French Ministry of Culture in 1976. It is not until 1981 that he became a full-time artist, and continue to exhibit in Paris and Japan. His works have been collected by the British Museum in London, the Geneva City and others. During 1993 to 2011, he used to settle in Auvers sur Oise, the outskirts of Paris, where Vincent van Gogh lived before his death. In addition to exhibitions in galleries and museums, his solo exhibitions at the Kodaiji Temple in Kyoto and the Château de Blois in France are extraordinarily bold and sedate. Combining the material of European traditional oil paintings and Japanese traditional printmaking techniques, the artist managed to create a unique sense of texture. The tension of the artwork was created by the large geometric composition, of which a modernized “Zen” spirit were exhibited. The outstanding and profound artworks were especially popular among European and Japanese collectors.