Makoto Fujiwara/ Symposium work                                       

Makoto Fujiwara was born in Gifu, Japan in 1938. He grew up with two older brothers - the father was a Buddhist priest - in a temple complex, very close to the Kanayama megaliths, which impressed him even as a child. 

Makoto studied at the municipal academy of fine arts in Kyôto, later in Paris and Vienna with Fritz Wotruba, and in 1970 he was a participant in the symposium organized by Karl Prantl in St. Margarethen in Burgenland/Austria. In 1974 he taught stone carving at the University of the Arts in Berlin before he was appointed professor at the University of Hanover in 1988.

It is no coincidence that Makoto worked with stone all his life, exclusively with stone, especially with Larvikite since 1985 in Larvik/ Norway, where he was able to work in the quarry of Lundhs. For Makoto, stone is more than just a material. The stone itself is the subject of his work. He has changed it in an endless approach in order to bring the stone to its best advantage. There is no third, nothing figurative. Makoto works with hammer and chisel, breaks and splits stones, shapes and polishes them.