Tsugouhara Foujita

The Japanese-French painter and graphic artist Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita was born in Tokyo on November 27, 1886. He received his three-year training as a painter at the Tokyo College of Arts during the time of Tenno Mutsuhito, under whom Japan opened up to Western art and culture during the Meiji period, giving both Japan and the West important stimuli, not least for art. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita belonged to the artists' association "Hakubakai" (White Horse Society), whose members were particularly open to the influences of Western art, and soon became extremely successful in Japan. Even the Tenno Mutsuhito acquires a painting by Foujita and he portrays the Empress Sunjeong in the Western style. A Japanese in Paris. In 1913, at the age of 26, Foujita moved to Paris and had his studio in the midst of the vibrant artist scene on Montparnasse. Within a short time, the Japanese artist with the distinctive potted haircut and round glasses, as contemporary photographs and self-portraits show him, came into contact with painters such as Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger and others, and he became close friends with Amedeo Modigliani. His first solo exhibition in 1917 at the Galerie Chéron became a sensation and Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita sold more than 110 of the watercolors shown. In 1921, he exhibited his nude paintings at the Salon d'Automne; it is the depictions shown here, in Foujita's characteristic milky-white color scheme and the exciting duality of traditional Japanese and contemporary European formal language, that established his fame in the Western world. Paintings with milky white coloring and clean lines. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita's preferred subjects include nudes as well as landscapes of the Paris area and still lifes. In the 1920s he increasingly produced self-portraits and some commissioned portraits of Parisian celebrities, which he produced with clear, elegant, mostly fine black outlines and his own delicate milky-white coloring. He also increasingly chose portrayals of cats as his motifs, and there are numerous paintings of his favorite cat in his studio. Nudes, landscapes, cat and children pictures. Foujita's late work is dominated by the numerous depictions of children he paints from the 1950s on. They are not created from models, but spring from his imagination: "I sometimes remember my impressions of children I have seen, but the children in my paintings do not come from real life. They are my own children, although I don't have children. I love the children in my paintings as if they were my own children," Foujita says of these works (see www.polamuseum.or.jp). In 1955, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita received French citizenship, and shortly thereafter he was also baptized Catholic and took the name Léonard. Now his choice of subject matter is predominantly religious, he paints Madonna paintings, himself as a monk, his last wife Kimiyo as a nun. Painting legend of the Parisian avant-garde around 1920, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita becomes a legend as an eccentric figure in dazzling Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Fifty years after his death, the Musée Maillol in Paris is presenting a fascinating show in 2018 focusing on the work produced in Paris during these années folles. Also in 2018, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto is debuting a large-scale retrospective featuring drawings, designs for book covers, illustrations, photographs, films, stage art, writings, ceramics, and more than one hundred of the signature milky-white nudes. Foujita's works still manage to captivate viewers today. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita died on January 29, 1968, during a stay in Zurich.