(Sotheby’s estimated worth in 2017 : £220,000—280,000)
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (aka Fujita Tsuguharu / Foujita Tsuguharu / Fujita Tsuguji) was born in 1886, in Tokyo, and died in 1968 in Zurich.
He was a Japanese expatriate painter who utilized French oil strategies to Japanese-style work, a member of the School of Paris, a bunch of now-famous artists who resided within the Montparnasse district of that metropolis. In 1910 Fujita graduated from what’s now the Tokyo University of the Arts. Three years later he went to Paris, the place he turned the pal of most of the nice forerunners of contemporary Western artwork, together with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Chaim Soutine, and Amedeo Modigliani. He exhibited his works for the primary time in Paris in 1917.
He turned identified for his portraits, self-portraits, nudes, metropolis scenes, and drawings and work of cats. He additionally revealed the restricted version A Book of Cats (1930), which included 20 drawings of cats and have become a extremely sought-after (and thus very helpful) artwork e book. (In 2014, this was estimated at $60-80,000 at Bonhams.)
In 1921, Foujita met a younger lady named Lucie Badoud; for the next decade she lived as his muse, lover and spouse, inspiring a few of the most sensual and hanging work that the artist ever produced. Together, Badoud and Foujita had been celebrities of the Montparnasse social scene: they hosted lavish events at their house whereas their names frequently graced modern gossip columns.
Foujita had been taken directly with Lucie’s magnificence: her snow-white complexion and sinuous curves. He re-named her ‘Youki’, which means ‘snow’ in Japanese. She remembers: “I didn’t like my first identify, Lucie. So Foujita’s first transfer was to ‘de-baptise’ me and rename me Youki; his second: to request I pose for a big nude portray”.
Indeed it was exactly at the moment, when Foujita included into his œuvre two of the weather for which he’s right this moment most celebrated: his motif of the nude determine and his ‘fond blanc’, a selected white floor which he utilized on canvases to provide them a luminous high quality. The latter approach was developed out of the artist’s want to symbolize what he now thought of essentially the most lovely of supplies: human pores and skin. Foujita had striven to excellent his fond blanc and reportedly by no means revealed the distinctive method to anybody.
He was no stranger to relentless work, steadily working towards his strategies and sticking to a strict sleeping schedule to maximise his productiveness throughout waking hours. He defined: “I depart all my supplies in a state of dysfunction in my studio; I by no means tidy them away even to obtain a customer. To do that might be silly. The customer would scarcely have left after I would get again to work two minutes later. To save much more time, I prepare dinner in my studio” (quoted in Sylvie Buisson, T.L. Foujita inédits, Paris, 2007, p. 122).
Another crucial particular person within the artist’s life and œuvre was his cat, named ‘Mike’ (which means ‘Tabby cat’ in Japanese). This cat was adopted by the artist shortly after his arrival in Paris after following him house in the future and refusing to depart his doorstep. The presence of a cat would go on to be a mainstay of Foujita’s works: typically as companion to a determine, typically because the central topic itself. Foujita adored their individuality and recognised in them a sure indefinability and unpredictability which he additionally attributed to ladies: he’s famous as saying that cats got to males such that they may study from them the mysterious methods of girls!
Fujita’s work is distinguished by his robust evocative line, an aesthetic that stemmed from his artwork coaching in Japan and was significantly admired by the Paris School artists. Foujita beloved drawing, and like his illustrious predecessor Hokusai, painted with nice talent. Foujita’s drawing is extremely assured and his strains have an exemplary calligraphic finesse, achieved by way of using sumi (Japanese black ink) on paper and in his oils. Colour performed a secondary function in his work however was utilized in such a decisive approach that it enhances the drawing. The subtlety of the gouache and watercolour fills the types with layers of flat color, creating delicate results of transparency in his oils. His gold backgrounds strengthen the impression of refinement and preciousness.
In 1931–32 Fujita traveled all through Latin America and had a significant exhibition of his work in Buenos Aires. During World War II in Japan he was a battle artist for the Japanese authorities, a call that was criticized by his pacifist friends within the Japanese arts community, who accused him of utilizing his artwork to advertise the militarist actions of Japan. With a marred popularity in his house nation, he went to the US in 1949, then again to France in 1950 – for the remainder of his life. He turned a French citizen in 1955, and a Legion d’honneur in 1957.
Exhibition in Paris in 2018
From 7 March to fifteen July 2018, the Musée Maillol in Paris is presenting an exhibition dedicated to Foujita. More than 100 main works, originating from private and non-private collections, present the distinctive nature of his interval in Montparnasse—the place his associates Modigliani, Zadkine, Indenbaum, Kisling, Pascin, and Van Dongen lived— through the Roaring Twenties. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s first and really productive Parisian interval between 1913 and 1931.
“Couturier cat”, 1927 portray
“Cat”, 1926 ink on paper
“Les chats”
“Cat”, 1956
Inspired by Foujita
My drawing is in pencil, of my Maine Coon cat Orlando wanting over my stitching necessities!
