Kaneta Masanao 兼田 昌尚

Born Hagi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan

An eighth-generation Hagi potter, KANETA MASANAO has expanded beyond the tradition of his ancestry to create a more sculptural oeuvre. Perhaps due to his training as a sculptor, his forms have a strong and dramatic presence that sets them apart from works by other artists working in this traditional ceramic center. Using the centuries-old Hagi white-pink glazes, Kaneta creates unique and readily identifiable functional and non-functional sculptural forms. His signature technique of kurinuki, in which he digs or scoops-out a form out of the clay instead of shaping it on a wheel, further allows him to boldly depart from ancient Hagi traditions. He tirelessly continues to pursue and challenge new difficult forms that fight against gravity while improving on glazing and firing in a climbing kiln.

Selected Public Collections:

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
Brooklyn Museum, NY
Cincinnati Art Museum, OH
Hagi Uragami Museum, Japan
Higashi Hiroshima City Museum of Art, Japan
Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum, Japan
Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN
Japan Foundation, Tokyo, Japan
Kanazawa College of Art, Japan
Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
New Orleans Museum of Art, LA
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
Portland Art Museum, OR
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
University of Tsukuba, Japan
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan
Yokohama Sogō Museum of Art, Japan