Fuyuko Matsui

Fuyuko Matsui (松井冬子, Matsui Fuyuko, born January 20, 1974) is a female Japanese artist, specializing in Nihonga paintings with a 'grotesque' or supernatural element.

Her art has been widely exhibited in Japan and she has been featured on TV and magazines. She was one of the featured artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo's "Annual 2006" exhibition and at the Yokohama Museum of Art's "Nihonga Painting: Six Provocative Artists" in August 2006. She then concentrated on graduating from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music.

From late 2011 to early 2012, she had her first major retrospective at a large public museum. Entitled “Becoming Friends with All the Children in the World” the exhibition, held at the Yokohama Museum of Art included art from her entire career as well as new works.

Despite its often shocking aspects, her art is part of the tradition of Japanese art going back centuries. For example, her painting "Insane Woman under the Cherry Tree" (2006) is inspired by "Ogress under Willow Tree,” a painting by Soga Shohhaku (1730–1781), the iconoclastic Edo-period painter, who was influenced by the art of the Muromachi Era painter Soga Jasoku (d. 1483).

Part of her interest in the past comes from her background. She grew up in Mori, Shizuoka Prefecture in a house that had been in her family for 14 generations.

When Japan was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, Matsui was in her studio working on a painting.

"When the quake struck I was in my studio painting and the panel fell down and hit me,” she told CNN. “I quickly escaped outside, but I was so shocked by what happened in the Tohoku area that I couldn’t paint for two months. My mind was distraught. I stopped preparing for the Yokohama show."