Ion Codrescu: Haiga Painting

August 29th – November 29th, 2015

Ion Codrescu, Wind Gusting…(Louisa Howerow), ink on paper, 16 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

Haiga is a unique genre of art, which began in Japan, combining painting, poetry (haiku), and calligraphy. It appears as an intimate, small painting made for a page of an album, a sketch made on a fan that you can give to a friend, or a painting made on a very small piece of paper that you can present to a dear person. Haiga is like a musical miniature: an impromptu or a nocturne of Chopin.

“Composing a haiga painting is a way to emphasize the power and the content of haiku poetry because each word has the force of a brush stroke. To juxtapose poetry and painting in the same space is a challenge for any artist. Both for painting and poetry we need harmony, contrast, rhythm, accents, ideas, emotion, and expressiveness.”

– Ion Codrescu

Ion Codrescu was born in Cobadin, Romania, in 1951. He received his B.A. and M.A. at the Fine Arts Academy, Bucharest, and his Ph. D. in visual arts at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania, with a thesis on haiga painting.

His ink drawings have been exhibited in Great Britain, Finland, Slovenia, Japan, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, and his paintings are held in private collections and state museums in many countries. Among the awards he has received are the Akiyama Scholarship, Japan (1990), the Kokushikan University Scholarship, Tokyo, Japan (1998), the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary, Ireland (1998), the Art and Nature Centre Bursary, Farrera, Spain (1999), and the Japan Foundation Scholarship, Tokyo, Japan (2000).

He is currently an associate professor at the Ovidius University of Constantza, Romania, where he teaches history of art, creativity in art and comparative art.

This exhibition is held in conjunction with Haiku North America 2015 and is co-sponsored by the Mandeville Gallery, the Department of Visual Arts, Asian Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies. Photography courtesy of Frank Rapant. All images courtesy of the artist; images copyright of the artist.

For more information about the Haiku North America 2015 conference, please click here.