25. Koie Ryoji  鯉江良二

Koie Ryoji was born in 1938 in Tokoname, Aichi prefecture. He studied ceramics at Tokoname High School and started working at a local tile factory immediately after graduating. At he age of 20 he began producing his own pottery. He is considered one of the most important precursors of abstraction in contemporary Japanese ceramics and his art parallels that of 'Sodeisha', a group of avant-garde ceramic artists founded in 1948.  However, his work has never been attributed to a particular style or group; instead, he developed a unique style of his own that combines qualities from the past and the future. He was active both in functional ceramics such as vases, plates and chawans,and in ceramics as an independent art form. Although he also helped develop functional ceramics through his free, nontraditional views, his great achievement lies in the field of modern ceramic art and played a key role in the modernization of Japanese pottery using innovative sculptural direction. His application of glazes to the surface and his dynamic and innovative approach seem to have been inspired by artists such as Jackson Pollock, and his playful take on formalism recalls the ideas behind the minimalist movement in America in which the boundaries between two- and three-dimensionality were constantly being pushed. Koie won several awards during his career, including the Japan Ceramic Society Award in 1992, the Chunichi Cultural Award in 2005 and the Gold Prize for the Japan Society Award in 2008. His works are in permanent collections around the world, including the Smithsonian Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Centre National de Georges Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art.