A unique work of reverse painted glass framed in a milk white wooden frame by Nomura Ko exhibited at the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art in 2008 and published in the book Botsugo Ju-Nen Shimomura Ryonosuke Ten. Paint on glass scratched through using sgraffito techniques to reveal patterns through the layers of variously colored paints. 1950s, it is in overall excellent condition. The frame is 58.5 x 50 x 3 cm (23 x 20 x 1-inches). A copy of the museum catalog is included. This is an early experimentation with the surrealist techniques of frottage, grattage and sgraffito (among others) which would later give voice to his and a generation of abstract expressionists Mushin (no mind) works. This is in fact, an idea that has long standing relevancy in Japanese traditional art and culture, and Nomura would spend a good part of a decade exploring and combining these various techniques.
Nomura Ko (1927–1991) was born in Kyoto and graduated from the Nihonga Department of Kyoto Municipal College of Art in 1948. In 1950 he joined the Pan Real Art Association (until 1965), establishing himself as a significant figure in the postwar avant-garde movement in Japanese-style painting. Initially influenced by Surrealism, he shifted in the later 1950s toward abstraction and collage, employing unconventional materials such as newspaper printing molds, industrial waste, slate, and cement. From the mid 60”s he was driven beyond the framework to be a pioneer in installation exhibition, creating one-time works which allowed the room to be the frame. Through materially driven works and these later three-dimensional and spatial constructions, Nomura fundamentally redefined the physical and conceptual boundaries of Nihonga. His major exhibition history includes the aforementioned Pan Real (1950-1965), the Asahi New Artist Exhibition, the Asahi Selected Exhibition and the Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition. Trends in Contemporary Painting (1963), and Today’s Artists ’64 (1964). From 1978 onward, he participated almost annually in the Ge Exhibition. In 1986, he was featured in A Section of Postwar Nihonga at Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum. A major retrospective, Kyoto Art: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow III – Nomura Ko, was held at Kyoto City Museum of Art in 1989. His work was posthumously included in The Turning Point of Postwar Nihonga at Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts in 1993, confirming his pivotal role in transforming postwar Nihonga. Work by him is held in the collections of The Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, Fukui Fine Arts Museum, Kariya City Art Museum, Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, Meguro Museum of Art in Tokyo, Nara Prefectural Museum of Art, Osaka Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka Prefectural 20th Century Art Collection, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, Toyohashi City Museum of Art, Wakayama Museum of Modern Art, Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum, Sakuragaoka Museum, The, Kyoto University Art Museum and Kyoto City University of Arts among others.
