Senju Hiroshi

Mr. Senju was born in 1958 and brought up in Tokyo. He studied at Tokyo University of the Arts. While working on a series of local towns, he explored his own Japanese identity. He exhibited some of his works at Soga-kai : Japanese art group after which he started painting scenes from Japanese nature. He  relocated to New York where he continued to paint the natural world.

He produced a new series of 16 flat water paintings which were inspired by Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. This series of large-scale paintings was very impressive. It attracted the attention of people in New York and was covered in the New York Gallery Guide in 1993. A Japanese art critic, Mr. Ito Junji, who was directing the Venice Biennale, wanted to include the flat water series at the festival. Mr. Ito asked Senju Hiroshi to introduce his Flat Water series there. 

However Senju Hiroshi was exploring a new theme in his work and he insisted on creating a waterfall series for the festival. As a result, his waterfalls were displayed to a large audience. 

Two works from the Flat Water series will be included in the anniversary exhibition. This series became the inspiration for his famous Waterfall series. It took five years between 1987 and 1992 to create the Flat Water series. During those years he took at least three helicopter flights to study water from the air. He also camped for over two weeks while studying water. 

His “Waterfall on Colors” series was created during the pandemic when the world was closed. It is “on colors” because it depicts the world from behind waterfalls. Looking through the waterfall gives a perspective of a colourful world  obscured just behind a curtain of falling water. It expresses such a universally shared feeling of the time as people all around the world longed for a return to normal daily life.