Toshiko Takaezu, mid 1970s. Courtesy of The Toshiko Takaezu Foundation.
One of the twentieth century’s great abstract artists, possessed of prodigious energy and vision, Toshiko Takaezu was born in Hawaii to a Japanese immigrant family. She received her early training in ceramics in Honolulu, and then attended Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where she studied with Maija Grotell. Already in this early phase in her career, she was able to see correspondences between Abstract Expressionism and the spiritually infused traditions of East Asia, especially calligraphy and ink painting. She combined these cross-cultural influences into the closed forms for which she is best known: sculptures, or perhaps paintings-in-the-round, that are as individual as people.
Some are vigorously painterly, with splashes and rivulets of color coursing down their sides. Others are more meditative, sheathed in overlapping veils of hue. They have a close affinity with the work of other postwar expressionist artists, such as Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Mark Rothko. Throughout her career, Takaezu also pursued media apart from ceramics, including large-scale textiles and paintings, which extended her vocabulary of vivid chromatic abstraction.
Tamarind vessel in stoneware. Made by Toshiko Takaezu, USA, c. 1960.
35" H x 10" D
88.9cm H x 25.4cm D
SC860
Collection of Peter Russo