Keizo Koyama Memorial Hall

2025-05-02

The Keizo Koyama Memorial Hall is located next to the Keizo Koyama Museum of Art.
This building is a relocated version of Keizo Koyama’s atelier.

Keizo Koyama (1897-1987) went to France in 1920 to study painting.
He returned to Japan in 1928 and built a residence with atelier in Nango, Chigasaki City (then Chigasaki Town), Kanagawa Prefecture, the following year.
This is the building.

The last time I visited the museum, it was not open, so this is the first time I have seen the inside.

There is an explanatory board in front of the building.
It explains that lumber from Komoro was used in the construction of the atelier, and that fireplaces and furniture were imported from France.
And that the studio was donated to Komoro City by Koyama’s bereaved family in accordance with his wishes.
The explanatory board was erected in 2002, the year the memorial hall was opened.

When I asked if it was possible to take pictures inside the museum, I was told that it was not allowed to take pictures of the exhibited materials, but that I could take pictures of the entire room.

This is the inside of the entrance, though it is distorted because I used a wide-angle lens.

This is the living room.

The atelier has a high ceiling.
And the room was designed to resemble the room Koyama used in Paris.
The painting slightly right of center is titled “Shoen” (Pine garden) and depicts a pine forest in the atelier in Chigasaki.

You can see how high the ceiling is in this picture.

This is a view of the atelier area from the outside.

The second exhibition room of the museum is next to the atelier.

According to the website of Komoro City, “Part of the atelier and residence in Chigasaki” was moved to the new building, so it seems that the residence part was a little larger before the building was moved.

Nango in Chigasaki, where the atelier was located, used to be a villa area with pine forests before the World War II. After the war, the pine forests were cut down and turned into residential areas, and it seems that the pine forests remained only around Koyama’s atelier.

Since the location of the Chigasaki atelier is known, I checked an aerial photograph taken in 1977.
The building in the center of the photo, surrounded by trees, is Koyama’s atelier.
I thought the forest would be small, since Koyama himself described it as “a small pine forest of our house”, but it was much larger than I had imagined.