Minoru Niizuma was born in 1930 in Tokyo and died in 1998 in Long Island. He graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, in 1955, and from 1954 through 1958 he exhibited with the Japanese Modern Art Association. In 1959, he moved to New York and naturalized as North-American. He taught sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (1964 and 1970) and at Columbia University (1972 and 1984. His relationship to Portugal was strong and continued. He visited and worked in the country from 1981 through 1998, and he participated in the Simpósios Internacionais de Escultura em Pedra [Stone Sculpture International Symposiums].
Niizuma used different types of stone (volcanic rock, marble, granite, basalt), obtaining abstract sculptural shapes, with visible effects of cutting, polishing, texture and grain. His abstraction assumes both geometric configurations, with preference for cubic shapes, as well as organic forms, with reference to nature. In the artist’s work, there are also references to Japanese traditional folk art and to post-war western sculpture.
Some of his many solo exhibitions are: Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1966; Rockfeller University, New York, 1973; Center for International Arts, New York, 1976; Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1976; Umeda Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, 1977; Contemporary Sculpture Center, Tokyo; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, 1986 / Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, 1989. Niizuma’s collective exhibitions include: Brooklyn Museum, 1960 and 1964; The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, New York / San Francisco Museum of Art / The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1965; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1966; 13th Biennial Open-Air Museum of Sculpture Middleheim, Antwerp, 1975 and Seven Japanese Sculptures, Sendai, 1981. His work is represented in the collections of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Guggenheim Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; National Museum of Modern Art Tokyio, Tokyo and Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Tsu City, among others.
SN, November 2020
