Chihiro
Shimotani

Chihiro Shimotani is a Japanese artist born in Nara Prefecture in 1934. He graduated from the Kyoto Municipal Art College in 1961 and spent time as a visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1988. From 1992 to 1995 and from 1999 to 2005, he taught at the Summer Academy in Neuburg an der Donau, and from 1997 to 1998 at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Salzburg.

Shimotani's works often revolve around themes of word, writing, time, and transience. He frequently incorporates natural materials such as stones, wood, metal, paper, gold, earth, wax, plants, snow, ice, and water into his works, often printing, milling, or embossing words into them.

In 2008, Shimotani created the work "Vocalize", inspired by a poem by Arthur Rimbaud in which colors and properties are assigned to vowels. Shimotani milled some phrases from Rimbaud's poem into colored metal plates and transformed them into picture-text panels. The works of Mishima Yukio and those of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke have also provided Shimotani with starting points for visual works.

Shimotani has received several awards throughout his career, including the Grand Prize at the 1973 Biennale of São Paulo, the Grand Prize at the 1972 Tokyo International Print Biennale, and the Prize of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the 1972 Japan Art Festival in Central Museum, Tokyo. In 1995, he won the 1st Prize for the design project of the forecourt of the Schörghuber Group's corporate building in Munich.

Some of Shimotani's works can be found in public spaces, such as the Börse Osaka in 2011, two light sculptures at the EPA Munich in 2004, a wall relief for the world Essity in Mannheim in 2002, a wall relief for the new building of the publishing house Heilbronner Stimme in Heilbronn in 1995, the design of the courtyard of the European Patent Office in Munich in 1992, and the Pax Christi Church in Krefeld in 1980.

These public works demonstrate Shimotani's mastery of integrating art with architecture and public spaces, often incorporating natural materials and text in innovative ways.