Ikemura Leiko

Born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture. Lives and works in Berlin and Köln. After moving to Spain in the 1970s and studying at the University of Fine Arts in Seville, she lived in Switzerland before settling in Germany. Working across diverse media including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, glass works and ceramics, she explores fundamental themes such as the creation and transformation of life, the relationship between humanity and nature, and the boundaries between life and death. Through organic motifs evocative of young girls, animals, and landscapes, she has developed a poetic and fantastical worldview where Eastern sensibilities intersect with the traditions of European painting and has gained high international acclaim. She served as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1991 to 2015. In 2025, she was designated a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.

Recent solo exhibitions include Motherscape (Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2025), The Sea in the Mountains (Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland, 2025), Light on the Horizon (HEREDIUM, Daejeon, Korea, 2024), Toward New Seas (Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 2019), and Our Planet – Earth & Stars (The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2019)