Yorigami Munemi was born in Kyoto in 1944. He initially pursued an unconventional path for a ceramic artist, studying horticulture at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and graduating in 1967. His sensitivity to natural form and growth, cultivated through this background, would later become an underlying current in his ceramic practice.
In 1969, he apprenticed under Yagi Kazuo, a founding member of the avant-garde Sōdeisha group, and subsequently joined the movement himself. Immersed in the radical rethinking of ceramics as sculptural expression rather than functional craft, Yorigami developed a practice that balanced experimental freedom with rigorous material understanding.
He has exhibited widely throughout Japan, including repeated participation in major national exhibitions such as the Asahi Tōgei-ten Ceramics Exhibition and the Asahi Contemporary Crafts Exhibition. Internationally, his career reached a significant milestone in 1991 when he was awarded the Gold Prize at the Faenza International Ceramics Exhibition. The following year, his work was shown in Cairo and Melbourne—where it was also awarded—and received further recognition at the Modern Ceramics Grand Prix Exhibition held at the National Museum of History in Taipei.
In 1993, his work was selected for Ceramics Today at the Aichi Prefectural Museum, and in 2001 he was included in the landmark exhibition Kyoto Crafts 1945–2000, held at both the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums of Modern Art. Through these achievements, Yorigami Munemi has secured his place as an important figure bridging Kyoto’s postwar avant-garde ceramics and the international contemporary ceramic movement.
An EXHIBITION that also displayed his works "Shoka" Digital Catalog
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