Yoshimi Futamura: A Journey Between Ceramics and Visual Poetry

3 de March de 2024

Yoshimi Futamura: Sculptor of Earth and Fire

Born in the vibrant city of Nagoya, Japan, in 1959, Yoshimi Futamura embarked on a creative journey that took her into the depths of ceramics.

Her beginnings as a woman ceramist are a sign of tenacity and talent. Her initial training at the School of Ceramic Art in Seto, Aichi, between 1979 and 1982, and subsequent graduation from the Centre Artisanal de Ceramique de L’Ecole Duperre in Paris, laid the foundations for a distinguished career that transcends borders and cultures.

Since 1986, Paris became his home and studio, an urban canvas for his inspiration, where nature in its purest and most elemental form remains his constant muse. The sight of a fallen leaf in the Parisian streets is enough to ignite the creative spark in Futamura, reminiscent of the deep connection to the seasons and nature he formed in Japan.

Futamura’s work is a dialogue with the material itself, where clay is transformed under intense heat into forms that evoke the imperfect beauty of wabi-sabi.

Each piece is a testimony of transformation, where emptiness and absence become narrators of a deeper story about time and its impact on matter. This aesthetic of transformation gives his works an intense dramatic charge, capturing the very essence of life and nature in transition.

His artistic practice is based on the power of earth, water and fire, elements that combine to give life to new forms. Futamura finds in clay a secret message, an invitation to discover the path of a tactile imagination, where matter becomes the center of a new spirit emanating from the earth.

Futamura’s global presence beyond ceramics in Japan is indisputable, with works in world-renowned public collections such as the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Ariana Museum in Switzerland, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and many more. His art has been featured in numerous exhibitions, bringing the essence of Japanese ceramics to an international audience.

Yoshimi Futamura continues to challenge the boundaries of ceramics, fusing tradition with a contemporary exploration of form, color and texture. In each work, Futamura not only shapes clay, but also the perception of what ceramics can be, inviting us to contemplate the beauty in imperfection and the constant transformation of life itself.

List of Japanese master ceramists

In an attempt to give recognition to the master ceramists of Japan, we have made a series of biographical articles, you can access them through this drop-down list.
We hope this will help to spread the beautiful tradition of Japanese pottery.