It is with great pleasure that we present Collections: Winter 2013/14. The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, whose predecessor was the Wakayama Prefectural Museum (founded in 1963), inaugurated in the building of Kenmin Bunka Kaikan (the Cultural Hall for Citizens) in November 1970. It kept mainly forcusing on introducing artists related to Wakayama after the Meiji Restoration and started its activities anew at the current building designed by architect KUROKAWA Kisho in 1994. On the occasion of the relocation, it expanded the range of the collection, and it now holds more than 10,000-piece of works from home and abroad.

The exhibits at Collection Galleries are changed seasonally with various aspects, and this time with four sections: Artists from Wakayama and Modern Art, Dissolving Abstraction and Human and Clothing in the first half, and at the last section after the featuring exhibition Human and Universe comes a small section named Aspects of Plates.

The first section Artists from Wakayama and Modern Art introduces the tendency of the Modern Art in Japan which explored its own identity after being exposed to the western culture in the Meiji Era, with works by local artists and recent acquisitions. The following section Dissolving Abstraction focuses on strokes on large paintings by Mark ROTHKO, OKADA Kenzo, YAMADA Masaaki and so on. At the Human and Clothing, various works are gathered in the light of clothes which are never separated from the expression of human beings but are usually paid no attention. To see works cutting across the boundaries of time and place would let us find new sides of art works.

The last section of this exhibition is Aspects of Plates, a related display to the simultaneous show Human and Universe, where are three printing artists are introduced. Here are also presented artists who were especially interested in the characteristics of each method of printing. Centering around Wakayama-born artists YOSHIDA Masaji and HAMAGUCHI Yozo, the former was in pursuit of woodcut and the latter pictured sophisticatedly with black of mezzotint, we hope you enjoy various aspects of printing methods. Approximately 110 works will be on view.

*image (left)
Foundtain of the Earth, 1956
woodcut on paper, 51.9x83.2cm
© Masaji Yoshida
courtesy of the artist and MOMAW