Delicate lines and pronounced composition display an exhibition of  boys and girls, clad in nostalgic fashion and lifestyle. Their faces  and posture convey timeless beauty- Kiichi Tsutaya’s works, most  notably his nurie=coloring pictures, are a genuine work of art in its  own right. Starting in the 1940s, Kiichi soon developed a compelling  oeuvre of works, most of which were coloring pictures executed on  rough paper, through a lithographic process for mass production.

Packaged and distributed by the millions, Kiichi was one of the first  to provide young girls with the sensation of “kawaii”-a distinct  notion of charm and cuteness, eventually finding itself a firm  position in modern Japanese culture. It is not to anyone’s surprise  that artist Takashi Murakami, known for his ‘Superflat’ movement,  has already taken interest in Kiichi’s works, recently organizing an  exhibition at the Cartier Foundation in Paris titled “NURIE”.

Gallery Naruyama is pleased and honored to present “NURIE by  Kiichi”, a collection of original artworks from the 1940s and 50s. 20 plus original works, created for the package design, will be on  display. Brimming with vivid colors, Kiichi’s idiosyncratic color scheme and palette fuses the now retro and surprisingly pop; his expanses of bold colors on specific cultural  references、‘idealized’ physique with pink cheeks and dreamy  eyes, retrospect not only an era of the past but of our own youth,  and the wonders our minds were once capable of.

Kiichi Tsutaya was born in the Kyobashi Ward, Japan in 1914. Starting  in his twenties, Kiichi went on to create one of the most popular  coloring pictures in Japan of the 1940s and 50s. However, with the  commencement of color broadcasting by NHK in 1960, followed by the first televised animation series “Astro Boy” in 1962, the popularity of coloring pictures declined, and by 1965 Kiichi had already stopped producing his coloring pictures. Kiichi’s legacy still remained, with a solo exhibition at the Shiseido Gallery in Ginza in 1978 and participation in the “Nurie” exhibition at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, France in 2002. Kiichi passed away in 2005, at the age of 91.

Insert Image: Kiichi Tsutaya “Kiichi no Nurie” -original artwork for package design d. early 1950s