South West Illinois News

Krannert Art Museum exhibition explores suibokuga and watercolor paintings by Shozo Sato

A Krannert Art Museum exhibition features paintings by Shozo Sato, the founder of Japan House and an emeritus professor of theatre and of art at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, that explore landscapes of the United States, floral motifs and memories of postwar Japan.

Shozo Sato attends opening night of “The Ink Wash Paintings of Shozo Sato” at Krannert Art Museum, 2023.Photo by Della Perrone

In examining 20th and 21st century work by an artist who immigrated to the U.S., embracing Japanese traditions and aesthetics at a time when “West was considered best,” “The Ink Wash Paintings of Shozo Sato” focuses on an area that has not been well-studied by art historians, exhibition curator Maureen Warren said.

An artist-in-residence at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts for more than 20 years, Sato is a master of kabuki theater, calligraphy, ikebana flower arranging and tea ceremony, as well as painting.

“Shozo Sato is beloved on campus and internationally. But because his painting was a private practice, just for himself, it’s not been explored,” Warren said.

Suibokuga, a type of Japanese black ink painting, is a more than 1,000-year-old tradition emphasizing expressive lines that capture the essence of a subject, rather than its literal appearance, she said. While most of Sato’s artwork in the exhibition is within that tradition, his formal arts education in post-World War II Japan embraced Western styles. At that time, many Japanese artists abandoned traditional Japanese painting for Western media, such as oil painting, as well as abstraction and conceptual art, Warren said.

The exhibition includes three oil paintings Sato made while a student, including an abstract painting and a self-portrait, reflecting the kind of work being taught at Japanese universities at the time. When Sato arrived at the U. of I. in 1964 as a visiting artist, his colleagues urged him to adopt black ink painting so his work would not compete with their color paintings, Warren said.

Many of Sato’s paintings depict landscapes conveying both nature’s beauty and tranquility and its power and ferocity. The painted screens and landscapes “testify to Sato’s life as a student of the elements,” said Kevin Hamilton, the dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and professor of new media.

“These are not only pictures of water, sky, moon, petals. In Sato’s hands, ink and watercolor move as analogies and metaphors for these things. They don’t just stand in for the subjects they depict but help us understand them in analogous ways,” Hamilton said.

During a sabbatical year in 1984, Sato traveled throughout the West and Southwest painting the quintessential American landscapes, a subject with a long, multimedia tradition in the U.S. and one familiar to international audiences through Hollywood Westerns. The paintings portray American places but include both style and subject matter that are traditionally Japanese, including rock formations and pine trees, the latter symbolizing resilience in Japan, Warren said.

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