Hiroshi SENJU

Japanese　1958

Hiroshi Senju was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1958. He graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts as an undergraduate in 1982, and then as a graduate student in 1984. In 1995, Senju was awarded the Special Honor Award at the Venice Biennale, making him the first artist from Asia to receive the award. Senju is one of the few masters to use the thousand-year-old mineral-color painting style and is famous for his magnificent large-scale waterfall and cliff paintings. Senju’s works combine minimalist abstract expressionism with traditional Japanese painting techniques. In 2017, he was honored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for his important contribution to Japanese art. In the same year, he was honored with the annual Isamu Noguchi Award by the Noguchi Museum. His works are also found in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in the United States, as well as the Fukuyama Prefecture Modern Art Museum, Tokyo Mountain Art Museum, Tokyo Art University, and Hokkaido Ishikawa Art Museum in Japan. In 2011, the Hiroshi Senju Museum Karuizawa opened in Hirano Prefecture, Japan. The building was designed by architect Ryue Nishizawa.