Tsuguharu Foujita
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (藤田 嗣治, Fujita Tsuguharu, November 27, 1886 – January 29, 1968) was a Japanese–French painter. After having studied Western-style painting in Japan, Foujita traveled to Paris, where he encountered the international modern art scene of the Montparnasse neighborhood and developed an eclectic style that borrowed from both Japanese and European artistic traditions.
Tsuguharu Foujita
29 January 1968 (aged 81)
Japanese
French
Painting
Printmaking
Tomiko Tokita
Fernande Barrey
Lucie Badoul
Madeleine Lequeux
Kimiyo Horiuchi
With his unusual fashion and distinctive figurative style, Foujita reached the height of his fame in 1920s Paris. His watercolor and oil works of nudes, still lifes, and self-portraits were a commercial success and he became a notable figure in the Parisian art scene.
Foujita spent three years voyaging through South and North America before returning to Japan in 1933, documenting his observations in sketches and paintings. Upon his return home, Foujita became an official war artist during World War II, illustrating battle scenes to raise the morale of the Japanese troops and citizens. His oil paintings won him acclaim during the war, but the public's view of him turned negative in the wake of the Japanese defeat.
Without significant prospects in the post-WWII Japanese art scene, Foujita returned to France in 1950, where he would spend the rest of his life. He received French nationality in 1955 and converted to Catholicism in 1959. His latter years were spent working on the frescoes for a small, Romanesque chapel in Reims that he had constructed. He died in 1968, not long after the chapel officially opened.
Foujita is a much-celebrated figure in France, but public opinion of him in Japan remains mixed due to his monumental depictions of the war. Recent retrospective exhibitions organized since 2006 in Japan have sought to establish Foujita's place in Japanese twentieth-century art history.
Biography[edit]
Early life in Japan and career beginnings: 1886-1913[edit]
Foujita was born in 1886 in Ushigome, a former ward of Tokyo that is now part of the Shinjuku Ward. He was the son of Fujita Tsuguakira Fujita, an Army Medical Director.[1] Two years after his birth, the family moved to Kumamoto, on the island of Kyushu. Following the premature death of his mother and his father's subsequent remarriage, the family moved back to Tokyo in 1892.[2]
Foujita developed an interest in painting in primary school and as an adolescent decided to become a painter.[3] When he was fourteen, one of Foujita's watercolors was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris as one of the representative artworks by Japanese middle schoolers.[3]
Foujita began studying French as a high schooler and hoped to study in France after finishing school. However, his father, after consulting with his friend Ōgai Mori, a surgeon and novelist who had previously lived in Germany, encouraged him to continue his studies in fine art in Japan. He enrolled in 1905 at what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and studied under Seiki Kuroda, who taught yōga, western-style painting.[4] He also took courses on nihonga, Japanese-style painting, led by Seihō Takeuchi and Gyokushō Kawabata.[3]
Foujita met his first wife, Tomiko Tokita, a school teacher, during a voyage to Chiba Prefecture during which he realized a number of paintings for his diploma, including the artist's first-known first self-portrait. The two married in 1911.[5]
Foujita graduated in 1910. He exhibited in 1910 as part of the Salon Hakuba-Kai (White Horse Association), organized by Seiki Kuroda, which sought to popularize yōga with the Japanese public, and later at the first two exhibitions organized by Tokyo Kangyo, a structure that promoted art and industry.[6] However, his paintings were refused for three consecutive years at the salon Bunten, an annual exhibition organized by the Ministry of Education.[7] Foujita's paintings at this time—before he moved to France—were often signed "Fujita", rather than the francized "Foujita" which he later adopted.
Unsure of his personal style and never having lost sight of his dream to travel to Paris, Foujita decided to leave in 1913, when he was 27 years old. It was decided that he would receive an annuity from his father for three years, so that the artist would return to his home and his wife in Japan at the age of 30.[6]