KAZUKI Yasuo was born in Nagato-shi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, he had wanted to become a painter since infancy and first used oil paints when he was in the fourth year of junior high school after his mother, who had divorced and moved to Tsuwano-cho in Shimane, sent him a set. He attended the Tokyo School of Fine Arts where he studied in FUJISHIMA Takeji’s class. After graduation he taught painting in Hokkaido, Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, etc., while exhibiting his work in the Bunten (Ministry of Education Art Exhibition). He was drafted into the army during the war and based in northeastern China, spending two years in a Siberian prison camp after Japan’s defeat. Subsequent to his return to Japan he worked in the studio at his family home in Yamaguchi. He produced fifty-seven paintings based on his experiences in Siberia over the years until his death in 1974. The work shown here was first shown in a solo exhibition at a gallery in the Ginza area of Tokyo. The head of the dog, that is facing the viewer, the white cloth on the table, the fish and the bowl are all arranged in a vertical rectangular composition and we can see that this was carefully planned. Yasuo produced many of these pictures of everyday life while also working on his ‘Siberia Series’. This picture appeared in the ‘Bijutsu Techo’ magazine together with the comment, ‘an excellent composition, the use of backlighting is beautiful and the shape of the dog interesting’.