The Collection Exhibition I features Kihei Aoyagi (1904-38), a Western-style painter active from the late Taisho to the early Showa period.
Aoyagi was born and raised in what is now Hakata Ward, Fukuoka City, and decided to become a painter after experiencing the devastation of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, when he moved to Tokyo to pursue higher education. In 1937, at the age of 33, Aoyagi was accepted to the Shinbunten Exhibition without an examination.
Aoyagi excelled at interior paintings, but he also painted many still lifes. Onions, Chinese cabbage, lotus roots, grapes, figs, and other fruits and vegetables often appear in his still life paintings, and onions in particular seem to have had a special presence that reflected Aoyagi himself. He worked in Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Kitakyushu, and in 1936 and 1937, he broke new ground with large-scale paintings of his own children, and died at the age of 34, just as he was about to begin his career.
Although Aoyagi worked as a painter for only 15 years, he left behind many illustrations and book illustrations as well as oil paintings, and in his later years he also worked energetically on prints. Many of Aoyagi's works were born from his interactions with the literary figures of Fukuoka and Kitakyushu, and Aoyagi is an indispensable figure in the prewar literature and art of Kitakyushu. This exhibition traces Aoyagi's short but passionate career through his works from his early years to his later years.

Also on display are works by Aoyagi and his contemporaries, including painters associated with Kyushu such as Ebihara Kinosuke, Kojima Zenzaburo, and Nakamura Kenichi. Other works from the museum's representative collection will also be on display, including Degas's "Manet and Madame Manet" and Basquiat's "The Fireman.