Ei-Q
Japanese visual artist (1911-1960)
Ei-Q (瑛九, Eikyū; April 28, 1911 – March 10, 1960, in English occasionally "Q. Ei" or "Ei Kyu") was a Japanese artist who worked in a variety of media, including photography and engraving. He came to the forefront of the Japanese avant-garde with his 1936 collection of photo-dessins, a fusion of photograms and paintings. He also founded several art organizations, including the Democratic Artists Association.
Life and career
Ei-Q, whose early work was done under his real name of Hideo Sugita (杉田 秀夫, Sugita Hideo), was born in Miyazaki-machi (now Miyazaki City), Miyazaki Prefecture on April 28, 1911. In 1925 Sugita entered an art school in Tokyo to study western-style painting, and his criticism of western art started appearing in the art magazines Atelier and Mizue in 1927, in which year he also left the school. In 1930 he entered a photography school and from then on pursued both painting and photography and more particularly photograms, first experimenting briefly with these in 1930, then dropping them in pursuit of painting, and then returning to them in 1936.
Ei-Q was influenced by the Surrealist aesthetic and also published essays promoting photography as an art form independent of painting. This did not imply a rejection of painting, and he worked toward what in 1935 he termed photo-dessins, a fusion of photograms and paintings. A first collection of these, published in an edition of 40 in 1936 as Nemuri no riyū (眠りの理由, "the reason for sleep"), took him to the forefront of the Japanese avant garde. Akiko Okatsuka rates Ei-Q (as he had named himself in 1935), together with Sutezō Otono, as standing out among the many Japanese exponents of photograms, unlike the majority in their ability to use them for expressive rather than merely playful ends.
The public source identifies “Ei-Q” as japanese visual artist (1911-1960). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ei-Q, Japanese and visual.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2044914. VIAF identifies the subject as 50134361. The Library of Congress control number is nr90009700. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1960, 1936 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ei-Q” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.