The Nishinomiya-based glass entrepreneur Tokutaro Yamamura (1926-86) spent 30 years assembling a collection conventionally presented as having three foci. First, as a survey of postwar Japanese art trends. Second, as the abstractions of Gutai Art Association (1954-72) painters. Finally, as one that covers the rise of expressive works driven by color and content in the 1980s, as seen in Tomoko Sugiyama¡¯s installation, ¡°The Start ¡ª A Man and Mamorigami¡± (1984).
As such, the Yamamura Collection, presently on show at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art ¡ª comprises 167 works by 68 artists and is considered indispensable to postwar Japanese art history¡¯s sense of identity.
Yamamura started collecting with his mother, Haru, and planned a museum tracing lineages of Western and Japanese modernism. In 1963 he acquired works by Jackson Pollock, Joan Miro, and Fernand Leger. But following his mother¡¯s death in 1965, he donated his foreign artist works to the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, and elsewhere. Thereafter he prioritized collecting Japan¡¯s postwar art.
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