Lumi Mizutani
France
Lumi Mizutani is a Franco-Japanese painter and lithographer who has been based in Paris since 1973. She graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, where she studied French literature. Her ink works attest to her dual pictorial and choreographic training. She started painting with Japanese masters Shigemasa Kawai and Chinese Zou Tao in Japan (2012-2016 and 2006-2010, respectively), and studied classical dance and dramatic mime at the Étienne Decroux School in Paris (1974-1975).
Although part of her oeuvre is entitled "Calligraphy(ies),” and alternates between abstraction and figuration (trees, nudes, Japanese landscapes...), Lumi Mizutani does not paint true ideograms; contrary to appearances, in reality, she choreographs the fluctuations and inflections of her brush (or improvised tools), soaked in ink, water and sometimes colors, at the surface of the paper which, sometimes doubled by a sublayer, produces transparencies.