Sculpture in the form of an abstract horse. Of slab raised Shigaraki type stoneware with an applied, thin red slip. Signed with an inscribed signature and date by the artist: Su and 79 (Suzuki Osamu, 1926 – 2001). Showa 54 or 1979.)

Suzuki Osamu was the son of a potter who was a wheel-throwing specialist in the workshop of the Kyoto potters Eiraku Zengoro XIV (1852 – 1927), XV (1880 – 1932), and XVI (born 1917). He studied ceramics at the Kyoto Municipal Technical College, graduating in 1943. Enlisting in the air force after this, his military service was cut short eight months later by the end of the Pacific War in 1945. At this point, he returned to ceramics and his life-work as a potter.

Suzuki Osamu was a founding member of the Sodeisha art group in 1948 – 1950, along with Yagi Kazuo and Yamada Hikaru, and he has been at the forefront of avant-garde ceramics in Japan since that time. As Louise Cort relates in Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics (page 160), much of the Sodeisha artists’ “early work drew on techniques of Chinese Cizhou ware or of Korean inlay, both of which employed white slip beneath a clear glaze. The Cizhou format, in particular, with decoration painted with iron pigment over a thick coat of white slip or incised through the slip to the clear body (sgraffito).” This style strongly appealed to Suzuki Osamu and his fellow artists as a means of adapting the modernist vocabulary they were discovering in the foreign journals and books that became available again after the Pacific War. These young ceramists often found inspiration in the imagery of Paul Klee, Joan Miro and Picasso. The Sodeisha potters’ work changed the course of Japanese ceramics for the rest of the century.

After Yagi Kazuo’s death in 1979, Osamu took over the teaching of ceramics at the Kyoto City University of Arts, retiring in 1992. In 1994, Suzuki Osamu was designated Juyo Mukei Bunkazai or Important Intangible Cultural Asset (commonly known as a Living National Treasure).

For other examples of his work, c.f. Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics, Figure 3.49 (page 165) and Figure 3.50 (page 166). See also Kagedo’s catalogue, Breaking Light, number 147.

Inspired by early haniwa figurines, Suzuki Osamu’s abstract horse series displays the raw power of the earth. Constructed of massive sections of Shigaraki clay with red and brown toned slips, these elemental sculptures were among Osamu’s most compelling work.

For examples of other Osamu horses, c.f. Suzuki Osamu Togei Sakuhinshu, numbers 73, 78, 79, 81 – 84. See also Toji: Avant-Garde et Tradition de la Ceramique Japonaise, page 108.