Tetsu Fusen Art Collection

Tetsu Fusen Art Collection explores paintings that combine a quietly humorous, affectionate view of the world with extraordinary detail and a strong spiritual imagination. Nostalgia, personal loss and faith inform landscapes that seem to hover between remembered places and an imagined paradise.

Numerous enlarged details reveal the fine observations within the broader compositions. The collection moves through recollection, landscapes, prayer and the sea before considering paradise, bringing together 52 reproductions in the artist's first artbook.

Born in Tokyo in 1891, Fusen joined the Japan Art Institute's study group in 1914. He later spent about three years in a fishing village on Izu Oshima before moving to Kyoto to study Japanese painting, graduating at the top of his class in 1923. His work received recognition at the Imperial Art Exhibition, and he maintained a long friendship with painter Shoko Uemura.

Fusen subsequently settled in Nara, where his life also included work as a school administrator and principal. He continued painting through later bereavement and died in 1976. This 182-page Japanese-language collection from Kyuryudo presents his distinctive world in a modified B5 paperback format.