1917 – 1987 :
Chuta Kimura was born in 1917 in Takamatsu in southern Japan to a family of the provincial bourgeoisie. During his rather solitary childhood, he liked to draw.
In 1937, he studied at the Nika Art Academy in Tokyo where academic education did not suit him. He was then sent to China for his military service, during the hostilities. He was fascinated by the Chinese people and art, particularly by ancient calligraphy. Ill again, he returned to Japan where he was demobilized. He now devoted himself to painting and exhibited at the Dokuritsu salon. In 1941, at the Ohara Museum, during an exhibition of French painting, he discovered Bonnard whose light dazzled him.
In 1947, he married Satchiko Yunoki, with whom he decided to realize his dream of the West. With the support of a patron, the young couple settled permanently in Paris in 1953. He painted Parisian landscapes and landscapes. In 1954, he exhibited two paintings at the Salon des Artistes Français, then in the Art Vivant galleries in Paris and Lyon. From 1965, Jacques Zeitoun regularly exhibited Kimura at the Kriegel and Sapiro gallery. During the summer months, he traveled to the South of France, where he found his inspiration. He painted the garden of the “Clos Saint-Pierre”, above Cannes where he had his studio and the landscapes of the Var and the Alpes-Maritimes. From the 1980s onwards, numerous exhibitions were devoted to him, including those at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Fiac, the Art Yomiuri France gallery, the Ruh Sigel gallery in New York, and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. in 1985. In 1987, he attended his last opening at the 112 Green Street gallery in New York. He died in Paris on July 3, 1987. Subsequently, several Japanese museums held exhibitions of Kimura, including the Tokyo and Osaka retrospectives in 1994. He exhibited regularly from 2004 to 2015 at the Nicolas Deman Gallery.
