Shuji Hijiya (1942–2018) was a Japanese painter who spent most of his life in Germany. After his first exhibitions in the 1970s, he withdrew from the art world to continue working in complete seclusion. Many of his works remained unseen until his death – paintings that are only now coming to light, decades after they were created.

Born in Japanese-occupied China in 1942, the painter first studied sociology in Tokyo before moving to Vienna and later to Germany. Over the decades, he developed his own independent, Western-influenced visual language in Ostholstein and Berlin. At the same time, his painting remained imbued with a Far Eastern sense of emptiness, time and transience –

The exhibition ‘Intimate Landscapes’ invites visitors to discover this work.

In his paintings, Hijiya develops a form of still life of the soul:
not a naturalistic representation, but a condensation of perception and memory.

Shuji Hijiya's work has been represented by the Mutare Gallery since 2024.

Christoph Peters, who has repeatedly explored Japanese aesthetics in his literature and essays, will introduce the work at the vernissage and shed light on Hijiya's biographical and cultural tensions.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.