Yozo Hamaguchi

HAMAGUCHI Yozo was born in 1909 in Wakayama in 1909. He is the third son of the tenth president of Yamasa Shoyu, a soy sauce producer since 1645. Hamaguchi left the family business to pursue sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts (formerly the National University of Fine Arts and Music of Tokyo). In 1930, he left his university and went to France to study oil painting, watercolors and copperplate engraving. He returned to Japan on the brink of World War II. Determined to engrave in his own way, he went to Paris again in 1953, and in 1955 to develop the original technique of "mezzotint" there. Since receiving the Grand Prize of the International Section of Printmaking at the São Paulo Biennale in 1957, he has been awarded numerous times at various international art exhibitions and is considered one of the most great artists of the world. He moved to San Francisco in 1981 where he pursued his art for 15 years. He eventually returned to Japan in 1996 and died in 2000.