by Cristina Berna (Author), Eric Thomsen (Author)
Shinsui Ito was born 4 February 1898 in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo and died 8 May 1972.
Shinsui Itō was his pseudonym.
Shinsui designed mostly bijin-ga and only more occasionally landscape prints, see Shinsui Ito Landscapes by authors. Bijin-ga is "pretty ladies", akin to pin-up art.
Bijin-ga (美人画, びじんが, "beautiful person picture") is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women (bijin) in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre.
At the age of ten, young Hajime found employment at the Tokyo Printing Company after his father s business went bankrupt, and here he began to show serious interest and talent in Nihonga, Japanese-style painting.
In 1911 he was introduced to Kaburagi Kiyokata, a renowned painter, and became Kiyokata's student. It was Kiyokata that gave Hajime his artist's name, Shinsui. When Shinsui was eighteen years old, his paintings were seen by the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo at an exhibition at Kiyokata's art school.
Ukiyo-e itself is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that was produced in Japan from the 17th century to the 19th century. The prints were very popular amongst the Japanese merchants and the middle class of the time.