ENDO SUSUMU
Lithograph. Born 1933, Yamanashi Prefecture. Musashino Art College; Kuwasawa Design School.
Permanent Collections: The British Museum, London; Museum of Cracow, Poland; National Museum of Warsaw; Poland National Museum of Silesia; Poland Sao Paolo Art Museum/MASP; Brazil Sao Paolo Contemp. Art Mus./MAC; Brazil Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum; Spain Skopje Contemp. Art Museum; Yugoslavia Gallery of Contemp. Art in Novi Sad; Yugoslavia Bharat Bhavan, Roopankar Art Mus;, India Ukraina Independent Center of Cont. Art; Ukraine Art Gallery of New South Wales; Australia Museum of Contemp; Graphic Art, Norway National Museum of Modern Art; Kyoto, Japan Gunma Prefectural Modern Art Museum; Japan Wakayama Prefect. Modern Art Mus., Japan Tochigi Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Hokkaido Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Shibuya Shoto Art Museum, Japan Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan. Also represented in many corporate collections and has received numerous prizes at prestigious international art events such as GABROVO 1993, the Cracow International Print Triennial 1994 and the International Print Triennial of Norway 1995. In 1999 he received the Purple Ribbon Award from the Government of Japan, and in February 2000 he had a solo exhibition at the Daiwa Foundation in London.
Trained originally as a graphic designer, Endo started printing his lithographs in 1979. His early works, depicting everyday objects like pencils, light bulbs, eggs, bottles, were created by manipulating photographic images. In 1992 Endo progressed from the large machine to his own computer. A major change in subject matter came about when nature became the all-important element in his prints. Although the prints appear multi-faceted, only one photograph is used as the base. He experiments all the time, going back to his everyday objects, introducing them into his nature images or nature into them. His latest works have an ethereal quality, with light being as important an element as the grasses, leaves, trees. Endo works hard at not being stereotyped as typically Japanese, but, although fiercely contemporary, it is obvious that he draws from the long artistic tradition of Japan.
