Itsuo Kobayashi was born on April 27, 1962 and he lives in Saitama Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. For 28 years Itsuo worked as a chef in a Soba restaurant (traditional Japanese dishes with buckwheat pasta) and in a supply center for school meals in Saitama. He began having difficulty walking due to alcoholic neuritis. He was 46 years old and he was forced to leave his job, falling into depression. The disease does not allow him to cook, so he is forced to order take-away food, when his mother is not supplying him.
However, his passion – and work for those 28 years – was not abandoned: from the inability to cook he drew a new rebirth through drawing (which he had been doing since the age of 26), letting himself be inspired by his memory, safeguarded in notes he wrote about his meals since he was 18 years old. He transformed his bedroom into a place of artistic creation, thus not allowing obstacles to his culinary imagination. Nobumasa Kushino, owner of the Kushino Terrace Gallery (the main holder of Kobayashi’s works), tells me by email that Itsuo’s bed is surrounded by shells, crab legs and seafood he has eaten, as well as disposable chopsticks, unused condiments that come with packaged meals and other items. He imagines menus composed of collages that combine designs enriched with tempera and recipe descriptions. Some of them hide dishes, others conceal names, prices and opinions about the food and ingredients he depicts. He adds positive descriptive words about his subjects, such as “delicious”, so that he may provoke good memories when he later looks at the drawings.
From the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional pop-up technique, his work is linked to the traditional Japanese prints, along with a colorful realism and a reference to children’s book illustrations. He has made a series of drawings of hands holding sticks and he has produced more than 1000 drawings. What stands out is that all these drawings allow to see all the ingredients, a sort of visual recipe.