Deputy Director
Professor of Japanese Arts, Research Centre Member, Centre for Japanese Studies, UEA
Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer is Deputy Director and Professor of Japanese Arts at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, affiliated to the University of East Anglia.
Prof. Bogdanova-Kummer is an art historian specialising in modern Japanese art. She received her Ph.D. from Heidelberg University and held postdoctoral positions at Emory University, Atlanta, and Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington, D.C., before joining the Sainsbury Institute. She is the author of Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde (Japanese Visual Culture Series 19, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020), which spotlights postwar calligraphers’ contribution to global abstract art in the 1950s and 60s, and their creative collaborations and competitive interconnections with artists of the European Art Informel and American Abstract Expressionism. Her recent article “Zen Violence: The Legacy of Nantenbō Tōjū’s Calligraphy in the Postwar Avant-Garde” won the Kenneth B. Pyle Prize for the best article published in the Journal of Japanese Studies in 2025. She is currently working on her second book project on the history of calligraphy modernization in East Asia, which explores the role of Tokyo’s calligraphic community within the cultural landscape of the Japanese Empire. She also serves as Vice-President of Japan Art History Forum (JAHF).
Her research interests include postwar art in Japan; modern calligraphy history in East Asia; transcultural studies; abstract art; and the relationship between image and language, and she is available to supervise PhD and MA projects in these and related areas.
Email: E.Bogdanova-Kummer@uea.ac.uk , e.bogdanova-kummer@sainsbury-institute.org
Selected publications
Articles and chapters
- 2025, ‘Zen Violence: The Legacy of Nantenbō Tōjū’s Calligraphy in the Postwar Avant-Garde‘. The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 51, Issue 1, p 1-40.
- 2024, ‘Chapter 4 A View of the Avant-Garde from Postwar Japanese Calligraphy’ in M. Trede, C. Guth, and M. Wakita (eds.), Japanese Art – Transcultural Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, pp 102-116.
- 2020 ‘Ink Splashes on Camera: Calligraphy, Action Painting, and Mass Media in Postwar Japan’. In Modernism/Modernity, John Hopkins University Press, Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2020, pp. 299-321.
- 2017 ‘Contested Comparisons: Franz Kline and Japanese Calligraphy’. In AnnMarie Perl(ed.) In Focus: Meryon 1960–1 by Franz Kline, Tate Research Publication.
- 2016, ‘Tatami and Wood: Ink Rubbings and the Discussion of Materiality in Postwar Japanese Calligraphy and Art’. In World Art, Volume 6, issue 2, pp. 269-291.
- 2016 ‘戦後の日本前衛書道と欧米抽象絵画における余白の概念について (About the Concept of Blank Space Yohaku in Japanese Avant-Garde Calligraphy and Euro-American Abstract Painting)’. In Kanbayashi Tsunemichi (ed.) 〈書の美学〉の伝統と変容 (Tradition and Transformation in Aesthetics of East Asian Calligraphy), Tokyo: Sangensha, pp. 384-412.
- 2015 ‘The Line Between Calligraphy and Painting: A View from Postwar Japan‘. Gerhard Wolf and Marzia Faietti (ed.) The Power of Line, Munich: Hirmer, pp. 118-128.
Books
- 2020: Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde (Japanese Visual Culture Series 19, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020)