Hiroshi Senju

Hiroshi Senju was born in 1958 in Tokyo. He trained at Tokyo University of the Arts, completing a BFA in 1982 and an MFA in 1984, and completing coursework toward a doctoral program in fine arts, specializing in nihonga, though he left before receiving the doctoral degree. His practice draws on the centuries old materials and techniques of Japanese painting, mineral pigments bound and applied to washi, combined with a scale and gestural sensibility that critics and galleries have compared to Abstract Expressionism.

His waterfall paintings, and later cliff and forest images, became his signature subject. In 1995 he was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 46th Venice Biennale, the first time an Asian artist received the distinction, and he moved to New York shortly afterward to be closer to the international art world. He continues to live and work in New York today. Over the following decades his paintings and fusuma, or sliding door panels, were commissioned for major public and religious sites, including the Kongobuji Temple complex on Mount Koya, Tokyo's Haneda Airport, and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. His institutional recognition in Japan culminated in the 77th Imperial Prize and Japan Art Academy Prize in 2020 and his election to the Japan Art Academy, reported variously as 2020 to 2022. In 2026 the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art paired his work with that of the Chinese artist Bingyi in the exhibition Into the Waters with Senju and Bingyi.

Senju is consistently described by galleries and institutions as a leading figure in contemporary nihonga, praised for fusing traditional Japanese materials and subject matter with a scale and abstraction that reads internationally. His Venice Biennale honor in 1995, his solo presentation of Paintings on Fusuma at the Tokyo National Museum in 2003, and his inclusion in Frontiers Reimagined at the 2015 Venice Biennale mark a steady arc of institutional endorsement. No verbatim, attributable critical assessment from a named critic at a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is quoted here.

Senju's exact all time auction record could not be independently confirmed for this profile. Public price databases (MutualArt) report category ceilings of about USD 764,235 for prints and graphic works and about USD 592,930 for works of art, but do not disclose the specific work, auction house, or sale date behind those figures, and Artprice's tracking of roughly 1,362 lots for the artist sits largely behind a subscription paywall. A painting titled Waterfall (2008) was offered at Sotheby's London with a presale estimate of GBP 120,000 to 150,000, though its realized price is not publicly available. The great majority of lots attributed to him are prints and multiples rather than major paintings, so any headline price should be read against a thin base of comparable sales. His primary market runs through Sundaram Tagore Gallery, which represents him in New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore, alongside representation in Japan through Tenpyodo.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Senju's work; authentication runs through his galleries, Sundaram Tagore and Tenpyodo, and through documented museum and institutional acquisitions. Public auction data for Senju is dominated by prints and multiples, and no independently verified all time high price for a painting could be confirmed for this profile, so any auction figure circulating for him should be treated as provisional pending confirmation from a primary auction house record. His deep museum and honors record in Japan and the United States, together with a 2026 Smithsonian exhibition, are the strongest signals of long term institutional standing, even as public auction data remains limited.