A 60-Year Painting History

Kimiko Fujimura was born in Japan, where she first studied at the Modern Art Institute in the late 1950s. In 1965, immediately after elected as one of Japan’s Top 5 Female Painters in Contemporary Art by Geijutsu-Shincho (芸術新潮) magazine, her breakthrough came in her first international exhibition in Hong Kong, sponsored by an American gallery. Those achievements opened up her eyes on the worldwide art scene, and in 1968 she relocated her atelier to the Mecca of Pop Art, New York City.

In those early years, Fujimura participated in the historic show, Women Choose Women (1973) at the New York Cultural Center, the annual Contemporary Reflections (1973) exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and a number of group shows in New York galleries. By the time her tenth solo exhibition opened in Tokyo in 1975.

Even after a tragic accident of losing more than a hundred of Fujimura’s paintings by fire in 1978, her creative power and success never faded away. Her name was placed in British catalogue of international artists, World’s Who’s Who of Woman (5th Edition, 1979). Her passion for art couldn’t stay only in a canvas. It expanded to large-scale murals, to paintings on sculptures. Starting by Valentino’s showroom, she completed two other commissions in late 1986, both large, colorful murals: the first was calm, sandy landscape scene displayed on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center. The second, called Seven Rhythms, can be seen at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City today. Soon after, Fujimura was invited by a world-famous architect, Peter Marino for his project at Giorgio Armani’s house in Milan, Italy to do wallpaintings. In 2000, she provided her work to an international public art exhibit, CowParade in New York

Fujimura has gained and held the interest of several important collectors over decades. An aforementioned architect, Peter Marino in New York has been purchasing her work since the early 1970s. About the same time, Mr. and Mrs. Jürg Conzett of Zürich, Switzerland, opened the Moneymuseum in Zürich, where thirty of Fujimura’s large-scale paintings are installed in a permanent collection.

Today, after more than sixty years of being an artist, Fujimura shows no sign of slowing down. Her current oil painting work, Cosmos series (2000-2006) has placed on show at a world-famous contemporary art exhibition Florence Biennale, Italy in 2007, and her latest abstract painting series Line and Space is about to come.