Makoto Fujimura

“Splendor – Ghost” 89 x 66, Mineral Pigments on Kumohada

Makoto Fujimura is an American artist considered to be one of the leading figures in the “slow art” movement. He coined the terms “Culture Care” and “Theology of Making.” He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University and then pursued a traditional Japanese painting doctorate program at Tokyo University of the Arts for several years. His bicultural arts education has influenced his style, creating a fusion between contemplative art and expressionism.

Fujimura’s works have been exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide, including the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, Israel, the U.K., China, and Hong Kong. In 1992, at the age of 32, Fujimura became the youngest artist ever to have a piece acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

In November 2009, Fujimura’s works were showcased alongside those of Georges Rouault at Dillon Gallery. He created several new works in homage to the 20th-century master. His piece “Twin Rivers of Tamagawa” (part of the Collection of Tokyo University of Art Museum) was featured in the Panasonic Museum exhibit “Rouault and Japan” in 2020.

In 2023, Fujimura’s exhibition, “A Gaze Traverses Time and Space: Dialogue between Makoto Fujimura and Chinese Ancient Porcelain,” was held at C3M Museum on the Bund in Shanghai, China. The exhibition featured 17 paintings by Fujimura and 13 pieces of Chinese imperial porcelain.

In October 2023, Fujimura opened an exhibit of his paintings titled “My Bright Abyss: Paintings and Prints” at the Bradford Gallery at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, TN, in partnership with Covenant Presbyterian Church (Nashville) and Liturgy Collective.

In 2011, Fujimura founded the Fujimura Institute in honor of his father, Osamu Fujimura, a renowned scientist. The first project of the Fujimura Institute was the Qu4rtets, a collaboration between Fujimura, painter Bruce Herman, Duke theologian/pianist Jeremy Begbie, and Yale composer Christopher Theofanidis, based on T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The exhibition traveled to Baylor University, Duke University, Yale University, Hong Kong University, Cambridge University, Gordon College, Roanoke College, and other institutions worldwide. The Qu4rtets became the first contemporary art exhibit at the historic King’s Chapel in Cambridge, UK, for Easter 2015 and was exhibited in Hiroshima for the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings in November 2015.

In 2009, Crossway Publishing commissioned Fujimura for The Four Holy Gospels project to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. It was the first time a single artist had been commissioned to illuminate the four Gospels in nearly five hundred years. The Four Holy Gospels consist of five major frontispieces, 89 chapter heading letters, and over 140 pages of hand-illuminated pages, all created in traditional Nihonga. The Gospels were exhibited at the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan and were displayed in Takashimaya, Nihonbashi, Tokyo, in 2011. The original art for The Four Holy Gospels was exhibited in the “Four Holy Gospels Chapel” at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., in 2018.

Fujimura’s works are part of the permanent collections at the National Modern Museum of Art in Tokyo, Yokohama Museum of Art, Tokyo University of the Arts Museum, the Saint Louis Museum, the Cincinnati Museum, the CNN building in Hong Kong, and other museums worldwide.

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