Torii Kotondo

Torii Kotondo
Born	21 November 1900
Died	13 July 1976
Movement	Shin-hanga

Torii Kotondo (鳥居 言人, 21 November 1900 – 13 July 1976) or Torii Kiyotada V (五代目 鳥居 清忠) was a Japanese artist of the Torii school of ukiyo-e artists.

Life and career

Kotondo was born Saitō Akira (斎藤 信) in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo. Torii Kiyotada IV, the seventh head of the Torii school of ukiyo-e artists, adopted Kotondo at age 15 and trained him in the school's specialty producing portraits of kabuki actors. Kotondo studied painting under the yamato-e painter Kobori Tomone from 1914 and under Kiyokata Kaburagi from 1918. Most of Kotondo's woodblock prints date from 1927 to 1933.^[1]

Authorities considered Kotondo's print Morning Hair of 1930 provocative and banned it after seventy of its hundred copies had sold and had the remaining thirty destroyed.^[2] When Kiyotada died in 1941 Kotondo became the eighth head of the school and took the name Kiyotada V.^[1]

Kotondo lectured at Nihon University in Tokyo from 1966 to 1972.^[1] Collectors did not place high value on Kotondo's prints while he was alive; the prints have since appreciated in collectability and fetch prices comparable to those of the great masters.^[3]

• Works by torii Kotondo
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References

1. Merritt & Yamada 1995, p. 155.
2. Harris 2011, p. 85.
3. Harris 2011, p. 78.

Works cited

• Harris, Frederick (2011). Ukiyo-e: The Art of the Japanese Print. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-4-8053-1098-4.
• Merritt, Helen; Yamada, Nanako (1995). Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1732-9.

External links

• Torii Kotondo at ukiyo-e.org