portrait of a girl 1923 Kishida Ryusei
Kishida Ryusei was a Japanese modern painter. He never visited Europe. His turning point came whe he saw reproductions of post-impressionist paintings in a Japanese magazine. He was very impressed and decided to become a modern painter. He became a pupil of Kuroda. He was very active in various modern paintergroups in Japan. Between and within these paintinggroups vehement debate took place. Kishida himself twice established a new paintinggroup. In his later years he studied classical Western painters like Rembrandt, van Dijk and Durer. The lessons learned from the old masters he applied in his famous paintings of his daughter Reiki (see above). In the twenties he suddenly turned back to traditional Japanese painting (Nihonga).