MORIYA FUMIO

• MORIYA FUMIO (born in 1938 in Ehime, Japan), is a member of the Action Art Association and former professor at Osaka University of Arts. As a central figure in the Kansai-based contemporary art group "Ge," he has made significant contributions to both avant-garde art and art education in Japan. From the 1960s through the early 1970s, Moriya focused on the human body as a central theme, exploring figurative expression through the contrast between organic flesh and inorganic structures. His use of spray techniques brought together vitality and coldness, movement and stillness—establishing a unique visual language charged with tension. A major turning point came in 1975, when he traveled to the United States as a cultural exchange artist with the Overseas International Friendship Society (O.I.F.S.). After this experience, his work shifted decisively toward abstraction, concentrating on the fundamental elements of painting: line, surface, and color fields. In the 1980s, he developed his Works series using scratch techniques, and his Traces series using irregularly shaped panels. Through repeated and accumulated lines, Moriya inscribed layers of memory and the passage of time onto his canvases. From the 1990s onward, he produced the Lines series, composed of systematically arranged rod- or bone-like forms, and the Shrines series, inspired by the architectural structures of Korean tombs and mausoleums. These works fuse geometric forms with folkloric symbols, constructing visual spaces where the individual and collective, past and present, intersect. Within postwar Japanese art, Moriya represents an embodiment of the "aesthetics of matter, action, and memory." His work is defined by its quiet yet intense tension, and he has opened new horizons within the lineage of Kansai avant-garde art. Beyond regional boundaries, his practice stands as essential testimony to the diversity of postwar Japanese art.

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