Lying Dragon Plum Tree [left of a pair]

Although he initially studied Western oil painting, in the late 1930s Funada Gyokuju came to be seen as a representative of avant-garde Japanese painting and participated in exhibitions of the experimental Rekitei Art Association, whose members were influenced by surrealist and abstract art. After the end of World War II (1939–45), he sequestered himself in his native Hiroshima, one of the cities that had been decimated by a nuclear bomb at the end of the war. He subsequently refused to participate in nationwide exhibitions. For this painting, based on the artist’s own photographs and sketches, Funada achieved the richness and density of thousands of plum blossoms by applying many layers of paint to the paper surface, one after another over the course of many years.