Ōmoto Yasushi (大本靖) (artist 08/30/1926 – 01/20/2004)

Links

Biography:

Yasushi Ōmoto (大本靖) was born the son of a liquor wholesaler in Otaru, Hokkaido on August 30, 1926 and moved to Sapporo in 1929 and lived there throughout his life. He first exhibited in 1942 and won a prize. He enlisted and served during World War II. He moved to Tokyo in the hope that he would entry Gijutsu University, but they were taking any new enrollees. As a result he entered the Meiji University School of Commerce before studying at the Asagaya Institute of Art in 1948.

After graduating In 1951 with a degree from Meiji University he returned to Sapporo to work in his brother's printing business, but only stayed one year. Basically self-taught when it came to print making, and in 1954 was was entered into the 22nd Japan Print Association Exhibition. That same year "The Sapporo Print Association was established in 1954 with Shiro Ozaki, Akiji Honda, and others around Fumio Kitaoka (1918-2007), one of Japan's leading woodblock print artists of the 20th century, who lived in Sapporo for a time after the war." It 1959 it was replaced by the Hokkaido Print Association.

One of his teachers was Fumio Kitaoka. In the 1980 he went to the US for demonstrations of the Japanese woodblock printmaking technique at the University of Indiana, Purdue and other places. In 1982 he gave technical demonstrations at Oxford University. Yasushi Ōmoto made prints in silkscreen technique as well. Main subjects of his print works are landscapes and nature scenes. Died on January 20, 2014 in Sapporo City, Hokkaido.

****

There are four prints by this artist in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. There is one in the Freer/Sackler Galleries.