Sanshin Yoshikawa (Ã¥ÂÂå·Âä¸Â伸, 1911âÂÂ1985) was a Japanese painter associated with Surrealism and avant-garde art in Nagoya. Active in the city's prewar Surrealist milieu, he helped form the group Avant-Garde and was a founding member of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club. In 1941, during the wartime repression of Japanese Surrealism, he was detained by the Special Higher Police, and his works and materials were confiscated; he was released in 1942 without indictment. After the war, he continued to work as a painter, and later recollected the wartime destruction of his early work in the series 1940.
Yoshikawa was born in Nagoya in 1911. Museum databases identify him as a painter and place him within the Nagoya-based development of prewar Japanese Surrealism.
A 1990 exhibition catalogue published by the Nagoya City Art Museum states that Yoshikawa, together with Tetsu Okada and Togawa Kaneo, was among the young painters who gathered around Yoshio Shimozato's studio in the mid-1930s and, attracted to Surrealist painting, formed the group Avant-Garde in 1936. The same source states that in November 1937 he became a founding member of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club, a Nagoya collective formed around Shimozato and Chirà « Yamanaka that brought together painters, critics, and photographers.
Museum sources further state that the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club split and dissolved in April 1939, when Shimozato turned toward avant-garde photography and formed Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde. In this sense, Yoshikawa belonged to the same Nagoya Surrealist milieu from which Kansuke Yamamoto later emerged as a central photographic figure. The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum notes that Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde developed from the photography section of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club in 1939, and that Yamamoto joined that group.
After the breakup of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club, Yoshikawa and other painters including Okada, Togawa, and Oguchi Noboru moved toward the newly formed Bijutsu Bunka Kyà Âkai. The 1990 catalogue states that they also organized the group Yà «kai in July 1939 and were active in the first Bijutsu Bunka Kyà Âkai exhibition in 1940. Kariya City Art Museum and the Toyohashi City Museum of Art and History both note that Yoshikawa studied under Ichirà  Fukuzawa and was involved in the foundation of Bijutsu Bunka Kyà Âkai.
In 1941, when the Surrealism crackdown unfolded on suspicion of violations of the Peace Preservation Law, Yoshikawa was detained by the Special Higher Police, and his works and materials were confiscated. Kariya City Art Museum states that he was released in 1942 without indictment. Nagoya Gallery likewise states that he was held for about ten months at Nagoya's Egawa police station during the crackdown.
The wartime repression that affected Yoshikawa was part of a broader assault on Japanese Surrealism. In Nagoya, the same repressive climate also bore on the milieu around Kansuke Yamamoto, who was active in Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde, the photography group that emerged in 1939 from the photography section of the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club.
Later museum accounts describe this experience as decisive for Yoshikawa's postwar development. Nagoya Gallery states that the near-total loss of his prewar work and his detention under police surveillance became a lasting point of reference in his later art, including the 1940 series, in which he revisited the wartime destruction of his early Surrealist practice.
After the war, Yoshikawa resumed his career as a painter. Later accounts describe him as developing from prewar Surrealism toward a broader postwar practice while continuing to reflect on war, destruction, and memory.
His work is held by museums including the Nagoya City Art Museum, the Kariya City Art Museum, and the Toyohashi City Museum of Art and History. Art Platform Japan's museum-collections search lists 15 collection records for his work nationwide.