KENGIRO AZUMA (1926–2016)
Lorenzo Madaro reports in the Italian Artribune that the Japanese artist Kengiro Azuma has died.
Born in 1926 to a family of bronze workers, he was enlisted in the Japanese armed forces during World War II as a pilot and went on to study at the University of Tokyo in 1949. He then moved to Milan in 1956 to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera on a scholarship. He also became an assistant to the sculptor Marino Marini, who proved to be a great influence on his work.
In the 1960s, he exhibited throughout Europe, including in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and was featured in the exhibition “The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture” in 1966 at MoMA in New York. In 1994, a retrospective exhibition of his work took place at the Museo d’Arte of Mendrisio in Switzerland and he has pieces in the permanent collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, among other institutional collections.
