BERLIN.- Nizo Yamamoto – Master of Anime Scenography, at the Tchoban Foundation's Museum for Architectural Drawing, is the first exhibition anywhere outside Japan devoted to the work of the Japanese art director and artist Nizo Yamamoto (1953–2023), whose imagery ranks among the most influential in Japanese animation.
Over more than four decades, Yamamoto worked with directors including Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Hosoda. His work on films such as Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has made his imagery familiar to audiences the world over – though, outside Japan, his name itself has, until now, remained known only to a relatively small circle.
The exhibition brings together background drawings, image boards and other production material, revealing how Yamamoto used light, atmosphere and spatial depth to create worlds that do more than simply define a setting – they actively shape the emotional impact of the films themselves.
Background paintings for animated film are made for a medium that unfolds over time. Often on screen for no more than a few seconds, they are rarely noticed consciously by audiences, and that is precisely the point: rather than compete with the story, they exist to serve it. Yamamoto's work shows that such functional images can carry a striking aesthetic power of their own. His pictures are extraordinarily refined: richly detailed yet never overworked. Instead of bold contrast, they rely on subtle gradation, atmospheric clarity and a quiet sense of depth. Yamamoto himself described his aim as wanting to draw the viewer's eye naturally into the depth of the image, and from there into the world of the film.
The exhibition is curated by Stefan Riekeles and will be accompanied by a publication.
The Tchoban Foundation's Museum for Architectural Drawing opened in 2013 on the site of the former Pfefferberg brewery. The foundation itself was established in 2009 by the architect and collector Sergei Tchoban, with the aim of promoting the art of architectural drawing. The museum stages three exhibitions a year, drawing on its own holdings as well as loans from renowned collections, including Sir John Soane's Museum in London, the cole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Albertina in Vienna, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Berlin, the Kunstbibliothek Berlin, and private collections.
The museum has already held two successful exhibitions on the art of background painting in Japanese animation. In 2016, Anime Architecture explored the urban settings of major science-fiction anime including Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor; in 2022, the original background paintings from the landmark film AKIRA were shown in the exhibition AKIRA – The Architecture of Neo Tokyo, marking the first time these works had been shown anywhere in the world.
