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Hiro Yamagata (artist)

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Hiro Yamagata (born 山形博導 Hiromichi Yamagata, May 30 1948, in Maibara city, in Shiga prefecture, Japan) is a painter/ artist, based in Los Angeles, California. He has been considered one of famous silkscreen artists because of his use of vivid colors in his pieces. However, he has been known as a contemporary artist using laser and hologram recently. He is recognized as a pioneer of contemporary laser artist.

1 Biography
2 Honorary citizenships
3 References
4 External links

Biography

Life in Japan

He was born as a third child of six siblings in 1948. His father ran a lumber business. Since he was a child, he had a talent for arts. He enrolled in Samegai primary school in 1955. While belonging to this school, he took art classes every after school. Also, he had precepts Taoism and Zen Buddhism from a chief of at a neighboring Buddhist temple where he was always hanging out with his friends. In 1961, he enrolled in Kounan junior high school. He enjoyed cycling with his friends around Lake Biwa that is the largest freshwater lake in Japan. Being on a school trip, he had a very first visit in Tokyo and was impressed by all the Neon sign and the atmosphere. Also, at this time, he was moved and inspired by beautiful lightening of stars which he occasionally viewed in a mountain with his family. He made his own telescope for his passion for observing the mysterious universe. At the same time, he started devoting himself to poetry. In 1964, he enrolled in Maibara high school. He learned under the school art teacher, Masachika Sugimura, a painter of the Japanese traditional style "Nihonga". While Yamagata was studying under him, he found a book of Henri Julien Félix Rousseau’s paintings which had a great impact on his mind. On the one hand, his works started to be prized and receiving awards; on the other hand, he started showing his new interests in using lights in his art works. He went to Osaka to see how lights were being used in the big city. From this moment, he has been into power of lights. We can see the influence of lights upon him from his work, using fluorescent lights. In 1967, he graduated from Maibara high school. At the same time, he became an official art student of Masachika Sugimura’s. However, he decided to move to Tokyo by himself in this year. Soon enough, while working at an artist’s material shop as a part time staff in Tokyo, an advertisement company found his taste something new. Then, he started working as an illustrator and a designer for the ad company. It is well known that while working there, he used to draw and paint on dice and grains of rice for refreshing himself. He established JIM with Yuhji Itsumi, Youichi Sai, and Takeshi Shino in Shibuya, Tokyo in 1972.

Life in Europe

In 1972, though he moved to Milan for his girlfriend’s sake, things fell apart. Then, he decided to move to Paris and settled there. He visited the Louvre daily and devoted himself to his own art works. At this time, he was impressed by paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel. In 1973, he had a contract to a gallery in Paris. Also, his very first one-man exhibition was held in Wien. Since then, he started putting his works at many galleries in Paris until he moved to L.A. In this year, his one-man exhibitions were being held in various European countries in this year. Most his works, at that time, were paintings in water and oil colors. His well known lithographic and silkscreen prints were not created or produced yet. While being in Paris, he found new passion for music, Jazz. He met musicians such as Akira Aida and Steve Lacy ,and poets, Brian Gysin, Allen Ginsberg,who had great impacts on Yamagata. Since he got fascinated with Jazz music and became one of the Jazz event organizers, he invested his money for it. He started putting his time and effort to gather money for it, too. On the other hand, the very next year, in 1974, he succeeded in his first approach of an installation art piece with laser at the theater in Paris.