Leiko Ikemura
Leiko Ikemura (b. 1951, Tsu, Japan) is a Japanese Swiss artist working across painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, and glass. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Born in Japan and educated in Spain before settling in Europe, Ikemura has developed a singular artistic language that merges Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions. Since the early 1980s, her multidisciplinary practice has explored themes of transformation, femininity, nature, collective memory, and the fragile interconnectedness of all living beings.
Her works inhabit a liminal space between the human and the animal, the real and the mythical. Ethereal female figures, hybrid creatures, and dreamlike landscapes emerge through luminous layers of paint and sculptural forms, evoking states of vulnerability, resilience, and perpetual metamorphosis. A recurring motif is the usagi (rabbit), a mythical messenger that embodies suffering, healing, and renewal while reflecting on cycles of creation and destruction.
Blending influences from East Asian painting traditions, Surrealism, postwar abstraction, and Neo Expressionism, Ikemura creates poetic worlds where boundaries between body, landscape, spirit, and memory dissolve.
She studied at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies from 1970–1972, followed by the University of Fine Arts, Seville, Spain from 1973–1978. In 1979, Ikemura moved to Zurich and later, in 1985, to Cologne to pursue a career as an artist. In 1991, Ikemura became a professor of painting at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Since 2014, she has held a professorship at the Joshibi University of Art and Design near Tokyo.
Ikemura’s work has been included in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently including Albertina, Vienna (2025), Kunstmuseum Chur (2025), HEREDIUM in South Korea (2024), Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin (2023), Feuerle Collection, Berlin (2023), Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands (2023), Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara (2023), Being Art Museum, Shanghai (2023), Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin (2012 & 2022), Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2021), CAC La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències València (2021), Kunstmuseum Basel (2020), The National Art Center, Tokyo (2019), and Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne (2015).
Ikemura’s work has also been included in group exhibitions internationally, most recently including at the Bienal de São Paulo (2025), Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2023), The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (2022–-23), 9th Beijing Biennale National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2022), The National Art Center, Tokyo (2022), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2022), Shandong Art Museum, Jinan (2022), Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, (2022), The Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021).
She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including Japan’s Persons of Cultural Merit Award (2025), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Award in Japan (2019), the Cologne Fine Art Prize (2014), the August Macke Prize (2009), and the Prize of the Association of German Critics (2001), among others.
Ikemura’s work is held in the permanent collections of international institutions such as the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Albertina, Vienna, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf, Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Berlinische Galerie, Kunstmuseum Bern, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein — Hilti Art Foundation, Vaduz, Kolumba, Cologne, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, National Museum of Art Osaka, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art Nagoya, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Mie Prefectural Art Museum Tsu City, Being Art Museum, Shanghai, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (NV), Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and the Nordic Watercolour Museum, Skärhamn.
Portrait shot by Lars Beusker.