amigos koike

F-ritz Art Center

2025

"Love Letter to Gunma" is a monthly serial in the advertising newspaper that runs five times on Sundays. In March, I depicted the Fritz Art Center in Shikishima, Maebashi, Gunma, and wrote about my love for the place. Forty years have passed since Omi-san, an aesthete, started creating a base for art and life in Shikishima. In the early 1990s, he established a bookstore that mainly sold children's books. I must have visited here sometime in 1994 with my sister and bought a beautifully printed overseas edition of the picture book "The Little House." The year before, I lost my family home in a fire and was based in Gunma because I needed to care for my family. Two years before, in 1992, I published my first picture book, and I was thinking about my identity again. At that time, I rediscovered the picture book "The Little House," which I loved as a child, in Maebashi, Gunma, and I think that this was the second step in my creative journey that continues to this day. Now, 30 years later, I am holding an exhibition at the Fritz Art Center, and I have tried to depict this aesthetic and place in the same style as when I first started painting at the Setsu Mode Seminar. In recent years, Maebashi City has been revitalizing itself through art, so I hope everyone will take a trip to Shikishima, on the outskirts of Maebashi.

client_name : 広告新聞

URL : 広告新聞インスタグラム

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