Harue Koga (古賀 春江 Koga Harue, June 18, 1895 - September 10, 1933) was a Japanese surrealist/avant-garde[1] painter active in the Taishō period.
His real name is Yoshio. He entered the priesthood and was renamed "Ryosho Koga"; "Harue" is an alias. He was born as the eldest son of the priest of a buddhist temple, Zenfukuji. He belonged to the Pacific Ocean Painting Association Laboratory and the Japanese Watercolor Painting Laboratory after he had gone to Tokyo. He won Nika Prize for "Burial" in 1922. He established an art group "Action" in the same year. He devoted himself to Paul Klee between 1926 and 1927, and became good friends with Yasunari Kawabata.[1] A lot of his art works were influenced by the movements and painters in the West such as cubism (Fernand Léger), surrealism, Klee, etc., and his style changed one after another in a short term. In general, his work of several years following "Sea" is considered as the beginning of the surrealism painting in Japan, and had a big influence on the following Japanese arts.