Maeda Masao 前田政雄 or 前田正夫  (1904-1974)

BIOGRAPHY

Source: Modern Japanese Prints 1912-1989, Lawrence Smith, British Museum Press, 1994, p. 29. 

Maeda was born in Hakodate, island of Hokkaido, and met Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997), a leader of the sōsaku hanga print movement, there in 1923. He moved to Tokyo in 1925 and joined the private Kawabata Painting School, moving on to more thoroughly study Western-style painting (yōga) with Umehara Ryūzaburō 梅原 龍三郎 (1888-1986), who knew Hiratsuka. At first he painted in oils, but by associating with Hiratsuka in the so-called Yoyogi Group (print artists who gathered at Hiratsuka's house in the Yoyogi district of Tokyo in the 1930s) and in the Kokuga-kai (National Painting Association) he learned woodblock techniques and began to make and exhibit prints in the 1930s. In 1940 he turned exclusively to prints. He was a member of Onchi Kōshirō's (1891-1955), another leader of the sōsaku hanga print movement, Ichimoku-kai1 (First Thursday Society). He contributed to One Hundred New Views of Japan (1940), the two Kitsutsuki Hanga-shu collections (1942-3) and number 3-6 of the Ichimokushu collections (1947-50), as well as Tokyo Kaiko Zue (Scenes of Lost Tokyo) (1945) and Nihon Minzoku Zufu (1946). He was publicized by Oliver Statler in his book Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: An Art Reborn, 1956 (in which his date of birth is given as 1906.) A typical sōsaku hanga group artist in many ways, Maeda nevertheless showed untypically the influence of Nihonga native-style painting. He also produced fine mountain scenes a little in the vein of Azechi Umetarō 畦地梅太郎 (1902-1999). 

1 The Ichimokukai – The First Thursday Society, which was crucial to the postwar revival of Japanese prints, was formed in 1939 by the group of people who gathered in the house of Kōshirō Onchi in Tokyo. The group met once a month to discuss print related issues.