Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942)
神坂雪佳

Sekka is known as a Rimpa painter but also was a great designer, eagerly organized groups of artists in different areas. In 1919 Sekka chose 22 craft artists in the areas of ceramic, lacquer, makie, metal, and wood, produced a lot of craft items which he designed.

Kamisaka Sekka was born in 1866 in Kyoto, the eldest of six sons. At the age of sixteen, Sekka began his artistic studies with the most prominent teachers in Kyoto, but it was only after a trip to Europe in 1901, and exposure to the European tradition of industrial design, that his own sense of design and its importance to everyday life blossomed.
While Sekka studied industrial design, he also explored the decorative arts tradition of the Rimpa School of which he became a master. He worked at the prestigious Kyoto City Municipal Museum and the Kyoto Municipal School of Fine Arts and Crafts. He exhibited at, and was judge for, the Kyoto Art Association, the San Francisco Great Exhibition, and the Domestic Industrial Design exhibitions. He received numerous Imperial commissions and honors, and was decorated several times by the Japanese and French governments for this work. He founded numerous art study groups and organizations and served as editor for a number of art publications. Sekka finally retired to his country home in Sagano on the outskirts of Kyoto in 1938, where he passed away on January 4, 1942 at the age of 77.
During his career, Sekka was acclaimed as the greatest living master of the Rimpa School and as the pioneer of modern design in Japan. However, with his death in 1942 at the height of World War II, the importance of Sekka's work was obscured in the subsequent political and cultural upheaval of the Occupation. While his work was included in numerous exhibitions during his lifetime, after his death there have been only four small showings of his work: two in Kyoto (1944 & 2000), one in Tokyo (1982), and one in London (1976). (Courtesy Birmingham Museum of Art)

References:
Kamisaka Sekka: Rimpa Master - Pioneer of Modern Design, Birmingham Museum of Art & National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, 2003