Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (b. 1973)

Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is the fourth generation of an illustrious family of bamboo masters from Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. Following a degree in sculpture at the Tokyo University of the Arts, he began an apprenticeship under his father, the renowned bamboo master, Tanabe Chikuunsai III (1940 - 2014) and he himself assumed the title of Tanabe Chikuunsai IV in 2017. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV has exhibited widely in Japan and abroad, in both individual and group shows. In 2012, he was selected by the National Policy Unit in Japan as part of the ‘Global Messengers of Japan Project’. Recent participations include the travelling exhibition Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection which started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2017, where his large bamboo installation graced the entrance and Fendre l’Air, L’art du bamboo au Japan, at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2018. In 2021, he won the first Mingei Bamboo Prize. His works are in the collections of institutions including the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Musée Guimet, Paris; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Imperial Household Agency, Japan.