Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (Tokyo, 1886 - Zurich, 1968).
"Self-portrait with easel", 1931.
Ink on paper.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 14 x 9 cm, 31 x 26 cm (frame).
Enclosed certificate of Sylvie Buisson.

Born with the name of Tsuguharu Foujita, he was a Japanese painter naturalized French. Linked to the School of Paris, he developed a very personal style, and was receptive to various influences, such as Gauguin and the symbolists. His art is characterized by the valuation of line over volume, leaving aside illusionism. He works with stylized silhouettes, shadows and simplified reliefs. After studying at the National University of Fine Arts in Tokyo, Foujita moved to Paris in 1913. Four years later he organized his first solo exhibition in that city, and from 1919 he repeated his presence at the Salon d'Automne. In 1924 he was appointed a member of the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts, although he did not visit his country again until five years later, with a very successful exhibition. He travels the American continent between 1931 and 1933, and then settles in Japan, where he makes several commissioned murals. He returned to Paris in 1939, but lived most of World War II in his country. After a stay in the United States, Foujita moved back to Paris in 1950. He adopted the French nationality, and in 1959 he converted to Catholicism, being baptized with the name of Léonard. Foujita brought to the avant-garde School of Paris the refinement and subtlety of traditional Japanese art and Chinese ink. His portraits, nudes and landscapes bridged the gap between Eastern tradition and Western modernity, as evidenced by the hundred or so works that made up the first anthological exhibition in Spain of the Franco-Japanese artist, held in 2005 at the Bancaixa Cultural Center in Valencia. In the artist's own words: "my body grew up in Japan and my work in France. I have my family in Japan and my friends in France. Now I have become a cosmopolitan of two homelands". Of refined education and exquisite courtesy, with an attractive and elegant appearance, Foujita and the subtlety of his stroke aroused the admiration of the artists of the bohemian district of Paris, Montparnasse, who immediately welcomed him into their midst. He never abandoned figuration, reinterpreted the classic genres of portrait, nude and landscape, and immersed himself in the atmosphere of those "crazy years" having as bohemian companions Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall or Soutine. He thus began a new vital and artistic stage, after winning numerous prizes in exhibitions in Tokyo, selling a work to the Japanese emperor and being called to portray the emperor of Korea. His work is present in the National Museums of Modern Art in Paris, Kyoto and Tokyo, the Petit Palais in Geneva, the Fine Arts Museums of Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Boston and Harvard University, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, among many others.