Satoru Hoshino

Satoru Hoshino (b. 1945, Niigata Prefecture, Japan) graduated from Ritsumeikan University in 1971 and, from 1974 to 1980, was a member of Sōdeisha, the Kyoto-founded ceramics group that broke from postwar Japan's functional pottery tradition toward sculptural, non-functional form. Working with the smoke-fired, unglazed technique known as kokutō — developed by Sōdeisha founder Yagi Kazuo — Hoshino builds his sculptural stoneware entirely by hand, pressing and squeezing clay rather than throwing it on a wheel, a method he adopted after a 1979 landslide destroyed his studio and earlier work. His piece Surface Strata and Depth II won the Minister of Education Prize at the 1979 Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition, and Ancient Wood-Land VIII received the Saji Encouragement Prize in 1998. He later taught at Osaka Sangyo University, rising to professor. His work is held by the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, and he lives and works in Shiga.