Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (Tokyo, 1886 - Zurich, 1968).
"Madeleine," 1933.
Ink on paper adhered to cardboard,
Presents dedication of Madeleine, wife of the artist on the back La Peña.
Signed, dated and located in San Francisco.
Measurements: 20.5 x 14 cm; 35 x 29 cm (frame).
In Madeleine, Foujita displays with full maturity his extraordinary mastery in drawing, making the line the true expressive core of the work. The ink, used with precision and elegance, builds a portrait that deliberately dispenses with volume and traditional shading to concentrate on stylized silhouettes and a refined, almost calligraphic stroke. Madeleine's profile thus emerges with an ethereal delicacy, suspended between physical presence and poetic evocation, evoking both the oriental graphic tradition and certain echoes of European symbolism.
Madeleine Lequeux, muse and sentimental companion of the artist in those years, occupies a central place in Foujita's iconography. Waitress at the mythical cabaret Le Sphinx and vedette at the Casino de Paris, she embodied like few other figures the free and nocturnal spirit of Paris between the wars. Her features, unmistakable for the intensity of her gaze and the firmness of her profile, made her the protagonist of some of the artist's most emblematic works, among them the famous Nu allongé (1932).
Born in Tokyo as Tsuguharu Foujita, he was a French naturalized Japanese painter and a key figure of the School of Paris. After training at the National University of Fine Arts in Tokyo, he moved to Paris in 1913, where he quickly integrated into the bohemian Montparnasse and developed an unmistakable style, influenced by symbolism and artists such as Gauguin. His work is characterized by the primacy of line over volume, the rejection of illusionism and the use of stylized silhouettes and simplified reliefs.
From 1917 he exhibited regularly in Paris and, from 1919, he participated recurrently in the Salon d'Automne. In 1924 he became a member of the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1931 and 1933 he toured the American continent, before settling temporarily in Japan, where he painted several commissioned murals. He returned definitively to Paris in 1950, after the Second World War, adopted French nationality and, in 1959, converted to Catholicism, taking the name of Léonard.
Foujita brought to the Parisian avant-garde the subtlety of traditional Japanese art and Chinese ink, bridging the gap between Eastern tradition and Western modernity. Faithful to figuration, he reinterpreted the classic genres of portraiture, nudes and landscapes, sharing the bohemian life of the "crazy years" with artists such as Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and Soutine. His work is now part of the collections of major international museums, confirming his prominent place in the art of the twentieth century.