今村 幸生 Yukio IMAMURA ✕切られし緑の帯・裸婦

今村幸生（1935〜）は、強烈な表現力が評価される作家です。作風は一つの様式にとどまらず、抽象と具象を行き来しながら表現を更新し続けています。

今村は三重県伊勢市に生まれ、中学生のときに美術や演劇などに惹かれると、宇治山田高校在学中に洋画家の足代義郎に師事しました。三重大学教育学部美術科を卒業したあと、中学校で美術教師をつとめながら独立展に出品して注目を集めました。1962年の第30回独立展で独立賞を受け、1964年に教職を辞して渡仏します。在仏中、ヨーロッパ美術や古代エジプト美術から大きな刺激を受けました。帰国後の制作のなかで、コンプレッサーの圧縮空気で液状の絵具を動かし描く技法を始めます。これはのちに「気流画法」とも呼ばれます。1977年末に再びパリへ渡り、以後はパリと伊勢とを往還しながら制作を続けました。

1980年代には具象表現を排した抽象表現へ移行し、「ゼノン・飛翔」シリーズを展開しました。その後も作風を固定せず、1990年代半ば以降は公共空間に置く大型作品にも取り組みます。今村の代表作としては、『原生図屏風』や『キカザッテモ オデカケ シナイ』があげられます。1992年には美術出版社から作品集「今村幸生作品集 1952-1991」が刊行されました。

近年は明快な色彩と筆による具象にも立ち返り、『巨大赤トンガラシ』（2006年）のような、色面の前に対象が大きく据わる作品も残しています。2014年には何必館・京都現代美術館、2018年には三重県立美術館で大規模な個展が開かれました。作家自身が画業を「変転」と語るように、技法と主題を組み替える姿勢が、今村の制作の軸にあります。

Yukio IMAMURA (1935–) is an artist recognized for his intense expressive power. His work is not confined to a single style; he continues to renew his expression by moving between abstraction and figuration.

Born in Ise, Mie Prefecture, Imamura was drawn to art and theater as a junior high school student and, while attending Ujiyamada High School, studied under the Western-style painter Yoshiro AJIRO. After graduating from the Department of Art in the Faculty of Education at Mie University, he taught art at a junior high school while exhibiting at the Independent Exhibition (Dokuritsu-ten) and attracting attention. He received the Independent Prize at the 30th Independent Exhibition in 1962 and left teaching in 1964 to go to France. During his time there, he drew strong stimulation from European art and from ancient Egyptian art. After returning to Japan, he began a technique of moving liquid paint with compressed air from a compressor. This method later came to be called “kiryu painting” (air-current painting). At the end of 1977 he went to Paris again and thereafter continued to work while moving between Paris and Ise.

In the 1980s he shifted toward abstraction that set figuration aside and developed the “Zenon–Flight” series. He did not fix his style after that, and from the mid-1990s he also took on large works for public spaces. Among his representative works are “Genseizu-Byobu” and “Kikazattemo Odekake Shinai.” In 1992, Bijutsu Shuppan-sha published the volume Imamura Yukio: Works 1952–1991.

In recent years he has also returned to figuration with clear color and brushwork, leaving works such as “Huge Red Chili Pepper” (2006), in which the subject stands large before fields of color. Major solo exhibitions were held at the Kahitsukan–Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014 and at the Mie Prefectural Art Museum in 2018. As Imamura himself describes his career as “hentten” (continual transformation), a readiness to recombine technique and subject remains central to his practice.