Saru Gallery
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Biography Odake, Kokkan 尾竹 国観 (1880 - 1945)

Odake Kokkan, also known as Kokukan, was born in Niigata-ken in 1880. He was the younger brother of the painters Odake Chikuha and Odake Etsudō.
He studied under Kobori Tomone and became a Japanese style painter, specialising in historical subjects. He was a frequent prize-winner at various exhibitions, winning his first major prize in 1907.The politics of the Bunten exhibitions led Odake Kokkan and his elder brothers to organize the Rakusenten - Exhibit of Rejected Works, after all of their paintings had been rejected for the 7th Bunten in 1913. In the next decade, they avoided government-sponsored exhibitions, continuing to show with the other rebel Bunten artists and with the Hakkakai group, which his brothers and he founded together.
He died in in Tokyo on May 18th 1945.

References:
Roberts, Laurance P. A Dictionary of Japanese artists, New York, 1976, p.123
Yui, Kazuto, Nijuseiki bukko Nihon gaka jiten, Tokyo, 1998, p. 94