PUBLIC OPENING
Gunnar Norrman: Enduring Astonishment
Transformation: Ceramics by Ken Matsuzaki
Saturday, 16 July2022
3:00 PM to 6:00 PM
240 Newbury Street, 3rd Floor
Ken Matsuzaki received a degree in Ceramic Art from Tamagawa University School of Fine Arts in Tokyo in 1972, after which he moved to Mashiko to apprentice with Tatsuzo Shimaoka. After a five-year apprenticeship, Matsuzaki established his own kiln, Yuushin Gama. Matsuzaki's works have a strong grounding in Mingei philosophy though his approach is very contemporary, focusing on the oribe style with yohen, shino, and oribe glazing.
Matsuzaki’s work has been exhibited all over the world, and has been accepted into the permanent collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida; Holderness School, Holderness, New Hampshire; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York'; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Sackler Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa, Israel; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Gunnar Norrman's endeavors in fine art were complemented well by his pursuits of music and botany. He was a skilled draughtsman, musician, and gardener. His delicate and subtle pencil and conté drawings, lithographs, and dry point etchings are like melodic compositions on the simple beauty of nature's gifts. In 1979, he was awarded the Prince Eugen Medal by the King of Sweden for his outstanding illustrations found in Naturen I Våra Hjärtan, an anthology of poems. Greatly respected in his native Sweden, Norrman’s works were featured in a 1997 exhibition titled Modern Scandinavian Prints at the British Museum, London, and continue to be exhibited internationally. He has also exhibited in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, England, France, Japan, and Italy. His works are in the collections of the British Museum (London); the Nationalmuseum (Stockholm), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), among others. In 2003, a catalogue raisonné, Gunnar Norrman: The Complete Graphic Works, 1941-2001, was published by Fitch-Febvrel Gallery in New York.