70. Hoshino Satoru  星野 暁

Hoshino Satoru was born in 1945 in Mitsuke, Niigata Prefecture. He studied at Ritsumeikan University after which he joined Sōdeisha, the highly influential avant-garde movement founded in 1948 by Kazuo Yagi and Suzuki Osamu, among others. Sōdeisha emphasized that ceramics is a separate and independent art form, and that functionality as prescribed by the rigid rules of the tea ceremony for centuries did not apply to this art form. In accordance with Sōdeisha principles and philosophy, Hoshino Satoru therefore created a wide range of works that are not bound by genre or functionality, such as objects, monuments and installations. Satoru Hoshino is one of the most important contemporary Japanese ceramists and has also received international recognition for his artistry and special working method, in which he creates strongly from his subconscious. When he touches the clay with his fingers, he does not allow his mind to intervene in the relationship between body and matter, and his pieces thus arise freely without correction by reason.The final form is the result of the confrontation between nature (the clay) and the body, the fingers pushing and kneading without reason imposing its will on the material. It is an approach most consistent with his desire to remain true to the natural material sense of the clay and its intrinsic properties. Hoshino Satoru has trained and introduced numerous students to his radical approach to ceramics, he was a professor or visiting professor at the East Sydney Technical College, the Canberra School of Art and the Osaka Sangyo University during his working life. He has also won important awards such as the Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition (Minister of Education Award) and the Suntory Museum of Art Grand Prize an his work is in more than thirty permanent collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy; the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.