December 15 – Happy Birthday, Chihiro Iwasaki

Posted on December 15, 2019




 
Born in Japan on this date in 1918, Chihiro Iwasaki was a Japanese artist / illustrator. She is best known for her water color paintings of flowers and kids, which followed the theme "peace and happiness for children."

Iwasaki had a tough early adulthood. Her husband committed suicide, and so she returned to her childhood home, in Tokyo, to live with her family. But that home was destroyed near the end of World War II. With the rest of her family, Iwasaki moved into the Matsumoto, Nagano, home of her grandmother. 

We can only imagine the horrors Iwasaki must have seen and heard about, living in the only nation to have suffered atomic bomb blasts plus all the bombing of Tokyo.

Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo
Iwasaki remarried and had a child. She used her son as a model for many of her illustrations. She lived part time in a cottage in the Kurohime Highlands, and she had a home built in Tokyo - a home that now houses the Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo. (There is another Chihiro Art Museum located in Nagano.)

I can certainly see why the Kurohime Highlands
inspired Chihiro Iwasaki's paintings of flowers!


The painting above inspired the Google doodle honoring
Chihiro Iwasaki below!





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