Shigeyoshi Koyama was born in Osaka (Japan) in 1940. Twenty two years later he moves on to Tokyo, and shortly afterwards, he begins his artistic trajectory as a painter. In 1970 he goes to Paris for the first time, where he spends six months; from Paris he travels to Cadaqués, where he will remain until the end of 1982. During this period he exhibits for the first time in Tokyo. A few years later, he goes back to Cadaqués, and in 1986, he finally settles down there. Ever since he arrived, he has been deeply involved with that beautiful town of the Empordà.
Light, as the revealing hand of whatever we can see, seems to stir the artist. Light that can be found in his works, precisely painted in the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, places that he seems to have chosen for good.
Yet, Koyama, in his own conception of the pictorial space reflects his oriental tradition: he does not analyze the perspective as per the renaissance canons, but he develops the subject from the plane determination. This is why, in his works we find a different way to determine reality: not as the eye sees it, but as knowledge and sensibility interpret it.
He indistinctly uses oil and water colour techniques. His palette prefers blues and greys tones, but he does not forget greens and reds, whites and oranges, that he chooses depending on the hour and the season. Art critic Frances Galí wrote: "to create a painting –inseparable from the design– he uses a chromatic display arising from a simple and wise combination of coloured blots (...) that emphasize and differentiate the calligraphies (...) complementing the plastic descriptions he puts forth".
Koyama keeps on being what originally he always was: a painter that, beginning with concrete references, creates atmosphere, worlds, ageless universes, which he can place in Cadaqués, but also in Barcelona, Paris, La Mancha, Albarracín, Sicily... And, it is this real and imaginary artist, oriental and occidental, figurative and abstract, at the same time, the author of what some critics have already called the Koyama style, which is another way, neat and consequent, to see the world.
Bibliography:
"Shigeyoshi Koyama, 1970-2005", by D. Giralt-Miracle, R. Santos Torroella, F. Galí and others.
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