Shoen Tominaga (1929–)
Born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture in 1929, Shoen Tominaga began his training in calligraphy at an early age. As a teenager, he was influenced by avant-garde calligraphy, including the works of Ueda Sokyu, as well as Jackson Pollock’s action painting, and began creating experimental works.

In 1951, at the age of 22, he joined Bokujin, a pioneering avant-garde calligraphy magazine, as a member of its Nagoya circle, following an invitation from calligrapher Morita Shiryu. He published many abstract works in the magazine. At the Genbi Exhibition held in Osaka in 1955, he came under the strong influence of artists such as Jiro Yoshihara, Kazuo Shiraga, and Sadamasa Motonaga. In 1956, he participated with other Bokujin members in the Neo Calligraphy Exhibition in San Francisco.

Tominaga was also deeply inspired by the philosophies of Isamu Noguchi, Saburo Hasegawa, and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, engaging in active exchange with artists and thinkers across disciplines, both in Japan and internationally. In 1957, sensing a stagnation in avant-garde calligraphy as it began to conform, he withdrew from the Bokujin-kai. From then on, he refrained from joining any specific calligraphy group, instead working at a general company until the age of 60, while continuing to exhibit his work in galleries in Nagoya, Tokyo, and New York.

After the death in 1985 of his most respected figure, Yuichi Inoue, Tominaga moved away from textual expression and became drawn to stainless steel works and mixed-media paintings using ink and crayons, applying calligraphic sensibilities to his creations.

Thereafter, he titled all of his works Katachi (“form” or “symbol”) and continued producing both pictorial and calligraphic pieces in parallel, without distinguishing between the two. In his solo exhibition at SHUMOKU GALLERY in 2015, he began once again to show works centered around characters.

His new works from 2016 reflect a return to large-scale pieces—created in a single, intense burst using ink, after days of mental image training. This marks his first major work of this scale in decades.

Shoen Tominaga has consistently sought to create work that is relevant to contemporary times, drawing inspiration from significant figures in diverse artistic and philosophical fields. As a 21st-century artistic expression, he presents large-scale calligraphy works in ink. His art—born of over 80 years of technical discipline and research into character expression, both historical and modern—divides space with the interplay of black and white, anchored with a red seal. While showing reverence to past masters, his work brings new vitality and modernity to the world of calligraphic expression through a distinctly Eastern methodology.