TSUNEO MARUYAMA

Art Museum

Snow

/　TOP　/　Crabs　/　Snow　/　Night　/　Europe　/　Mt.Asama　/　Flower　/　Miscellaneous　/
/　Artist TSUNEO MARUYAMA　/　Tsuneo Maruyama Art Museum　/　Column　/　References　/　Contact　/　

Language:

Snow

The last few years of Mr Maruyama’s life were marked by his steady, deliberate work, in which he moved away from crabs and worked with landscape motifs. I was secretly surprised to see that Mr Maruyama was becoming more mature. (Hajime Minamiohji, posthumous collection)

The artist has captured the flow of the snowy Chikuma River from the front without sentimentality. The warm colours placed faintly in the simplified snow form are truly beautiful, and make the picture more attractive. I think of Matisse’s words, ‘If you want to see, you can see flowers in any place’. (Yasuo Tanaka, ‘Tsuneo Maruyama,’ Nagano Prefecture Art Collection 7, The World of Western-style Painting Blooming in the Region)

The horizon in the distance evokes a sense of solitude. The silence of a snowy day can be felt on the dark surface of the water. The slight dusting of snow on the grove of trees is beautiful. (Yasuo Tanaka, ‘Tsuneo Maruyama,’ Nagano Prefecture Art Collection 7, The World of Western-style Painting Blooming in the Region)

The extremely accurate grasp of the subject matter and the high level of elegance in works such as Snowy Sekikawa River, Snowy Riverbed and Sluice Gate could only have been achieved by Maruyama-san, who firmly grasped the spirit of Nakanishi-sensei and Oka-sensei. (the owner of Daihitsu-kan, Seeing the exhibition of Tsuneo Maruyama’s posthumous works Part II, Shinshu Minpo).

The perspective is reminiscent of Katsushika Hokusai’s ‘Fugaku Sanjurokkei’ (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji). The sense of volume of the objects depicted in the foreground of the work is overwhelming. This landscape is a real scene close to the artist. The superfluous objects have been truncated and the energy is fully displayed. The railway bridge in the distance is lovely and the smoke rising from the two entrances is beautiful. (Yasuo Tanaka, ‘Tsuneo Maruyama,’ Nagano Prefecture Art Collection 7, The World of Western-style Painting Blooming in the Region)

The objects piled up on the beach must have matched the artist’s internal image. The work shows no signs of physical weakness. You can almost hear Tsuneo’s exultant breathing in the tension of the objects piled up in the middle (When a friend dropped by while he was working on it, Tsuneo was so exhausted that he jokingly asked her to help him paint it.) (Yasuo Tanaka, ‘Tsuneo Maruyama,’ Nagano Prefecture Art Collection 7, The World of Western-style Painting Blooming in the Region)