Yuki Katsura

Yuki Katsura (桂ゆき, ''Katsura Yuki,'' also ''Katsura Yukiko,'' 10 October 1913 – 5 February 1991) was a Japanese artist whose career spanned from the prewar to the postwar eras. During her six-decade career, Katsura did not conform to one particular artistic genre or style, instead employing a variety of approaches including painting, mixed media collage, and caricature to depict a range of subjects using folkloric allegory, religious iconography, realism, and experiments into abstraction. She was trained in both Japanese and Western painting styles and traditions, which was a rare accomplishment for a woman of her time. Katsura engaged with subjects that responded to critical socio-political events in mid-century Japan, such as societal expectations for Japanese women, the militarization of Japan, the post-war occupation, the rise of nuclear power, and gender equality. Her diverse approaches, engagement with critical issues, and adherence to personal autonomy gained her critical acclaim; she has been called a "pioneer among women artists," and is considered influential to the genesis of the Japanese avant-garde before and after the Asia Pacific War.

Katsura has been the subject of several large museum retrospectives in Japan, including the Shimonoseki Municipal Museum of Art (1991); Ibaraki Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (1998); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2013). While she is very well-known in her native Japan, Katsura was left out of the canonization of Japanese art and art market in a Western context for many years. In the 2010s, she became the subject of more curatorial and art historical interest and publications in English.

Katsura's artworks are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama; Ohara Museum of Art; Itabashi Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; the Yokohama Museum of Art; and the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Provided by Wikipedia