A Beautiful Evening

A Beautiful Evening 

良夜

Artist
OGURA, Yuki
小倉 遊亀
Birth Year
1895
Death Year
2000
Date
1957 
Technique, Material, Format
color on paper, framed 
Dimension
140.0 x 97.0 cm 
Category
Nihonga (Japanese-style Painting) 
Inventory Number
84-JP-005 

Ryoya, the expression used in the Japanese title, describes a beautiful, early autumn evening with a bright moon. From the shadows on this woman’s fair skin, we can guess that a brilliant moon shines above her in the sky. With her sharp features, the woman seems to be throwing up her arms and charging her body with the energy of the moon. Her naked body, sketched in thick outlines and a simplified shape, entails a sense of primitive vitality. Around this time, Ogura Yuki was pursuing new methods of expression by distorting and reducing shapes to their most simplified extremes. She commented that drawing things accurately becomes too rational an exercise, whereas if you distort, the shapes “are a lie, but they become true,” and that such distortion is essential to give the painting a sense of reality.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)

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