秋山飛瀑 (Autumn Mountain and Flying Waterfall), Mizuta Chikuho

Exhibition Label:
"Nature/Natural," Jan-2014, Kris Ercums
A towering cliff shrouded in clouds commands this painting, while a small boat floats along a winding river below. Mizuta Chikuho was a leading figure of the 20th-century revival of nanga ink paitning in the Kansai region (Kyoto and Osaka). Throughout his career Mizuta strove to achieve what he called “creative nanga“ (sōsakuteki nanga 創造的南画): the intergration of personal observations of nature with literati ideals and principles of brush work. The balance that Mizuta sought between nature and art, the external world and the inner world of imagination, encapsulated one of the major challenges for literati painters in the 20th century.

Mizuta was an effective organizer of nanga painters, forming the Osaka Discussion Group (Osaka Sawakai) and the Association for the Creation of National Painting (Kokuga Sōsaku Kyokai) in 1918, and later in 1921 he was instrumental in forming the Japan Nanga Institute (Nihon Nanga-in), serving as its principal leader until it disbanded in 1936. Travel was an important part of Mizuta’s creative life. In the 1910s he traveled to China with a friend, wearing Chinese clothes to better blend in as they visited famous sites associated with Chinese landscape painting, impressions of which can be detected in this painting.