Kitaoka Fumio

Kitaoka Fumio (1918 - April 23, 2007) was a Japanese artist trained in oil painting, and who later became interested in woodblock printing.

Kitaoka was born in Tokyo in 1918 and studied oil painting with Fujishima Takeji at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1936 to 1941. In his third and fourth years, he was instructed in woodblock printing by Un'ichi Hiratsuka.

In 1945 he was sent to occupied Manchuria to work with the Japanese government's Northeast Asia Culture Development Society. While in Manchuria, he became interested in contemporary social-realist Chinese monochrome prints.

In 1955, he moved to Paris to study wood engraving at the 丱ole des Beaux Arts, and then to the United States in 1964-65 to teach at the Minneapolis School of Art, and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he taught printmaking, contributing to the spread of Japanese printmaking traditions. He served as Director of the Japanese Artists Association and was named an honorary member of the Japan Print Association. Kitaoka died of pneumonia on April 23, 2007.

Kitaoka explored both realistic and abstract styles, finally settling later in life on a style that embraced both realism and abstraction in brightly colored landscapes