Asama V

Kunito Nagaoka

Many of Nagaoka's prints from the late 1970s are visual explorations of the volcanic landscape of his childhood home near Mount Asama in central Honshu, Japan. He peels away the layers of lava and ash, creating a trench that exposes the bedrock, deep beneath the surface.

Nagaoka commented about his work of this period: "The menace of the volcano consolidates a knowledge of the powerless dependence of the whole existence of my family who were so close to the land. After a landslide I see in the thin layers of the ages, the finality of all life and the new rice from the deadly ash."

Mount Asama is an active complex volcano located in Japan in central Honshu. The volcano is 8,425 feet above sea level. It has had frequent eruptions, including 2004, 2008 and 2009.

Kunito Nagaoka comments: "Up till the present, Asama continues to erupt at irregular intervals. 1908-1911: Establishment of the first research laboratory of the Provincial Government in Nagano. 1933: Establishment of the Research Center of the Geophysical Department of the University of Tokyo." "The physical confrontation with the volcano has become a spiritual one. The Catharsis that comes with expressing the anguish is through some private archaeology of exhuming the inner life in a magical function of the pictures transitory future."

Kunito Nagaoka, was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan in 1940. He worked as a graphic designer in Tokyo for three years before moving to Berlin in 1966. He studied in the Print Department in graphic, print, and advertising at the State Academy, and later in the Print and Painting Department of State Academy of Fine Arts. Her earned his Masters degree under Professor Gerhard Bergmann in 1976. It should be noted that he studied etching with Louis Kohnke-Duwell.

He was Guest Professor at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Reykjavik, Iceland in 1984 and 1985; Guest Professor of Grafikaan Paja, at Jyvaskyla, Finland in 1986; Guest Professor at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria in 1987, 1990 and 1993; and Guest Professor at the International Summer Academy in Gera, Austria each year from 1995 to 2008.

Nagaoka spent more than twenty years in Germany before returning to Japan where he was a Professor at the Kyoto Seika University, Kyoto, Japan from 1991 until his retirement in 2012.