The Sofia Art Gallery exhibition features 49 artists, each one presented with two works. In this respect, this is the largest-scale presentation of contemporary Japanese graphic art.

Since the beginning of 2000, the contacts between Japanese and Bulgarian graphic artists have become more purposeful. The friendship and professional cooperation, between Professor Akira Kurosaki and Professor Roumen Skorchev, dating from 1981, have laid the basis of the project. With the participation of „Lessedra” Gallery and its director, Georgi Kolev, the exhibitions ‘Contemporary Graphic Art from Japan and Bulgaria’, (NFAG, 2001) and ‘Contemporary Bulgarian and Japanese Graphic Art’ (Kyoto and Japan, 2003) were presented.

The Japanese Graphic Art Association is the largest organization of this kind in Japan and an internationally renowned partner. It was founded in 1931. Nowadays, it has 187 artists-members and its associate members are 181. Along with the achievements of contemporary Japanese graphic art, its annual exhibitions offer participation to young talents, and the use of new techniques and expressive means is promoted and popularized.

Akira Kurosaki was born in 1937 in Manchuria, Talien. He graduated from the Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto in 1962. Inspired by the Ukio-e style, he began creating woodcuts around 1967. In 1970, he received the award of the Ministry of Education from the Seventh International Graphic Art Biennale in Tokyo. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad and received awards in Florence, Seoul, Norway, Bharat, Cairo, Portland, Maastricht and more. In 1983 he received First Prize at the Second International Graphic Art Biennale in Varna.

He is a professor and Director of the Graphic Art Department at the Kyoto Seika University and a member of the Japanese Graphic Art Association. He is author of the books: “Contemporary woodcut”, “Woodcut”, “Work on paper”, “Graphic Art History”.