Migishi Kotaro

Born in Sapporo, 1903. After graduating from Sapporo Daiichi Junior High School (today’s Sapporo Minami High School), Migishi moved to Tokyo with the aim of becoming a painter. He worked tirelessly to teach himself fine art, and his entry was accepted at the first Shunyo Art Exhibition when he was 20 years old. In the following year, he received the highest award at the Shunyo Art Exhibition, grabbing the spotlight in the art world. Although he was good at painting simple portraits early in his career, his romanticism was stimulated by a trip to China, and after returning to Japan, he worked on a series of works themed on clowns. Eventually, he sought avant-garde expressions and created various types of work over a short period, including pieces using scratches, abstract paintings, and surrealist works with motifs of butterflies and shells. He started to build a modern studio, but died of illness while on a trip to Nagoya in 1934, when he was 31 years old.