LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (Tokyo, 1886 - Zurich,... Lot 47

LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (Tokyo, 1886 - Zurich, 1968). "Virgin and Child", 1964. Lithograph intervened with biros and watercolour, bon à tirer copy. Signed and justified in the lower right corner. Measurements: 58,5 x 40,5 cm. Born Tsuguharu Foujita, he was a Japanese painter who became a naturalised French citizen. Linked to the School of Paris, he developed a very personal style, and was receptive to various influences, such as those of Gauguin and the symbolists. His art is characterised by an emphasis on line over volume, leaving illusionism to one side. He works with stylised 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 held his first solo exhibition there, and in 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, when he held a highly successful exhibition. He travelled the American continent between 1931 and 1933, and then settled in Japan, where he painted several commissioned murals. He returned to Paris in 1939, but spent most of the Second World War in his own country. After a stay in the United States, Foujita moved back to Paris in 1950. He took French nationality, and in 1959 he converted to Catholicism and was baptised Léonard. Foujita brought the refinement and subtlety of traditional Japanese art and Chinese ink to the avant-garde School of Paris. 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 Centre 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". With a refined education and exquisite courtesy, with an attractive and elegant appearance, Foujita and the subtlety of his brushstroke 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 classical genres of portraiture, the nude and landscape, and immersed himself in the atmosphere of those "crazy years" with Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and Soutine as bohemian companions. He thus began a new stage in his life and art, after winning numerous prizes at exhibitions in Tokyo, selling a work to the Japanese emperor and being asked to portray the emperor of Korea. His work can be found 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.