Reopening Exhibition
Shimada Shozo—Works from the Yokosuka Museum of Art Collection

Shimada Shozo (1933–2016) was born in Yokosuka. As a Western-style painter closely connected to the locality, he served as a member of the Japan Art Academy (1999), Person of Cultural Merit (2004), and the first director of Yokosuka Museum of Art. In an effort to “translate French-born Cubism into the Japanese language (art),” employing unique representations of human figures he referred to as “katachibito (lit. form people)” in everyday scenes within geometric spatial compositions, he opened up new potentials in figurative painting.

There are currently approximately 130 works by Shimada Shozo in our collection. With the 75 works donated by the artist to our museum in 2001 at the core, our collection has been further enriched through purchases and donations from the surviving family and others after the artist’s death. As 2026 marks ten years since the artist passed away, we are exhibiting, for the first time, our entire collection of works by Shimada. In addition to an oil painting of a view of Yokosuka, drawings he did in Paris, and prints, there will also be a display of the easel and palette he used.