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Collection Highlights

Shunsuke Matsumoto and Zakkicho

Shunsuke Matsumoto was born in Tokyo in 1912. Having spent his boyhood in Hanamaki and Morioka in Iwate, he went to Tokyo again and became an artist. As an artist, from around 1935 to his death in 1948, Matsumoto painted human figures with his family and himself as his themes. Furthermore, he is known particularly to have painted urban landscapes full of poetic sentiment. While his paintings supported by a refined sensibility reflected the color of the time, they were always brimming with a sense of transparency. Together with Aimitsu, Saburo Aso, and others, he sought a new painting for his own generation and is an important artist that cannot be forgotten even today.

An exhibition featuring two artists, Shunsuke Matsumoto and Keiji Shimazaki, was held at The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura in 1958. It was ten years after Matsumoto had died. The achievements of this artist, who had passed away at the young age of thirty-six, were introduced and it proved a significant opportunity to appreciate his accomplishments in a historical context.

Having held the exhibition in 1958, the Museum undertook further research and collected materials on Shunsuke Matsumoto. Zakkicho was a monthly magazine which was published from October 1936 to December 1937. Matsumoto and his wife, Teiko, were involved in the editing. Fifty artists including Aimitsu and Masao Tsuruoka contributed original pictures to this magazine. In 1967, Mrs. Teiko Matsumoto donated altogether 85 works consisting of original pictures contributed as illustrations for Zakkicho, which allude to the friendship among the artists contemporaneous with her husband, and Matsumoto's own drawings plus three oil paintings. We also received a donation of ten oil paintings by Matsumoto from Mr. Shoroku Hatakeyama, a friend from the same district. Both donations form an unparalleled, valuable collection on Shunsuke Matsumoto.