The museum is delighted that over 1,100 works and reference materials collected by the sosaku hanga (original or self-produced prints) artist Kawanishi Hide throughout his lifetime have been added to the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. It is amazing that the Kawanishi Hide Collection is composed not only of oil paintings, watercolors, and prints by Kawanishi himself but extensively covers prints by Onchi Koshiro and Kawakami Sumio, with whom Kawanishi socialized, rare print works by craftsmen such as Tomimoto Kenkichi and Bernard Leach, and additional works by Japanese "avant-garde" artists such as Murayama Tomoyoshi and Takamizawa Michinao.

The most notable feature of this collection is that one third of the entire collection consists of works by Takehisa Yumeji. There are original paintings by Yumeji, which are being shown in public for the first time, and numerous practical works of art for daily use, about which it would be no exaggeration to say that they show the true worth of "Yumeji's designs." Kawanishi said, "What I was impressed by most of all in my youth were Yumeji's paintings." Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Kawanishi Hide Collection grew "together with Yumeji." At the same time, we should not overlook the point that this collection was built through the exchanges between the two artists Kawanishi Hide and Takehisa Yumeji.

The current exhibition introducing a full view of the Kawanishi Hide Collection is being held to commemorate the addition of this collection to the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. We have attempted to re-examine the Kawanishi Hide Collection, which existed "together with Yumeji" with the exchanges between Kawanishi Hide and Takehisa Yumeji at its core, within modern art history and to reconsider the source of Takehisa Yumeji's creativity and his art historical worth.