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Tohun Kobayashi

​From an early age, he learned brush strokes from his mother, a calligrapher.

As a young man, he learned Chinese ink painting techniques through acquaintances and exchanges with masters at the National Palace Museum in Beijing, deepening his appreciation of ink painting.

In 1987, he painted the walls of the “Art of Japan” exhibition in Paris, and since then, he has painted walls in China, Indonesia, the U.S., and other countries, gaining high acclaim in each country.

 

During this period, he received numerous awards at public exhibitions in Japan and abroad.

In 1991, he became a permanent member of the board of directors of the All Japan Art Exhibition and a member of the jury. Later, he became interested in traditional Japanese ink painting, which has a high spirituality, and began to work on barrier paintings for shrines and temples.

He also served the main anchor of the exhibition.

His ink paintings are currently collected by many museums and public facilities in Japan and abroad, and he has also created huge murals for office building decoration, CD jackets, books, and corporate faces on the Internet. He has also appeared in a “Suibokuga no kyoshou [Masters of Ink Painting]” commercial video (Kodansha Ltd.) and authored “Suiboku de egaku [Draw with water ink]” (Graphic, Inc.) and many other books, and has been actively involved in a variety of fields, exploring the possibilities of new expression in ink painting. He is active internationally as a standard-bearer of modern Suiboku-ga (ink painting) and as an introducer of traditional Japanese art.

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