2013 Kitakata Museum – Kyuetsu Inagashi and his paintings

Kitakata Art Project 2013 (Fukushima, Japan)

For this project I focused attention on Kyuetsu Igarashi, who had a hobby of paintings as a teacher of backwardness, and emphasised the relationship Igarashi’s life and the community, centring on works of Kyuetsu. At the exhibition hall “Kita no Sato”, texts from the from his wife Toshiko Igarashi, items of memories and memorable photos were displayed. Seventeen oil paintings and four sketchbooks are also exhibited in the exhibition.

Kyuetsu Igarashi shared various memories with his wife Toshiko and lived together. A survey was conducted focusing on interviews with Toshiko for this project. It is not a survey based on public literature but a survey that encompasses personal memories and subjectivity. The memories of the general people are a valuable history that is important for individuals even in a small history in the history of the state, the world. I connected each one of Toshiko’s memories, and carefully shapes Igarashi’s lifetime record. I evoked Toshiko’s memory and spun out a sensitive emotion.

Moreover, Igarashi’s life and the relationship with the area was made warmly emerging. By digging down the viewpoint of individuals in this way, it is possible to emphasise the culture rooted in the area where the person lived. This activity picked up Toshiko’s memory from her dialogue and revived one person living in Kitakata with a technique that can only be done with art.

Kyuetsu Igarashi was born in Sugawara Town, Kitakata City, Fukushima Prefecture on 19^thof June 1922. He served as a teacher in Fukushima Prefecture, while continuing to draw pictures for the rest of his life. He passed away in 2009. Igarashi’s works were sorted by attaching the title, production date, and a number of the work to the back of the paintings. Besides, you can see the eager and detailed nature of his research, including recording pictures in the middle of photography and recording changes. However, according to Toshiko, Kyuetsu did not do anything about the house, he seems to have just painted a picture.