Matsui Fuyuko (born in 1974) is one of the most noteworthy young artists working today.

Yokohama Museum of Art held the exhibition “NIHONGA Painting: Six Provocative Artists” in 2006. Matsui was one of these “provocative artists” who have found new values and approaches to artistic creation in the esthetic thinking, subjects, styles and techniques inherited from classical Japanese painting that were lost or discarded in the process of developing Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) during the period of modernization.

Matsui became captivated by the expressive possibilities she discovered in traditional Japanese painting and received extensive training in Nihonga on the undergraduate and graduate level at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Her graduation work, Becoming Friends with All the Children in the World, was a turning point that led to her subsequent paintings dealing with themes more closely connected to the ground of human existence - life, death, and madness. Her unique esthetics based on the feeling of “pain” commands considerable attention both at home and abroad.

This exhibition, her first large-scale solo exhibition at a public museum, reveals the range of Matsui Fuyuko’s creativity and illuminates her view of the world through more than 100 works of art including her masterpieces and drawings as well as new works for this exhibition.