Toeko Tatsuno
Solo Exhibition
Toeko Tatsuno solo exhibition
2024.7.20 (Sat.) - 9.7 (Sat.)
Opening hours：12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and holidays
*The gallery will be closed from 11 August (Sun.) to 19 August (Mon.)
*In conjunction with Erina Matsui Solo Exhibition
Opening reception: 20 July (Sat.), 2024, 17:00 – 19:00
We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce the forthcoming solo exhibition of works by the artist Toeko Tatsuno from July 20 (Sat.) to September 7 (Sat), 2024. Ten years have passed since Tatsuno passed away in 2014, many exhibitions related to her work are still being held and planned. The composition of this exhibition will center around a large canvas work she produced in 1994. As might be gathered from her comments about how moved she was by the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua1 and remark in an interview that blue was her color2, blue was special to her. Besides this work on canvas using blue, the exhibition will show various types of prints and printed works of the times that hold an important place in her work, including early works from the 1970s to later lithographs she made at the art printing house IDEM in Paris, where she resided in 2011 and 2012.
Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1950, Toeko Tatsuno devoted her production to two-dimensional works with an abstract expression, and was constantly active on the leading edge of such art. While enrolled in the Department of Painting at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (the current Tokyo University of the Arts), she joined with Toshio Shibata and Shinichi Kamatani in forming Cosmos Factory. It was after the golden age of Abstract Expressionism, and painting on canvas with a brush was thought to be totally obsolete3. In these days, she was influenced by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and launched her career in silkscreen printing. In the 1970s, she used grids to make works in which new space appeared by disparities created in the course of repetition, and acquired confidence in her own works. From the 1980s onward, she stopped imposing excessive constraints in the context of the pictorial order, and produced many organic oil paintings and acrylic paintings that contained chains of simple, geometric shapes such as circles and squares “arriving from the world of images” (in her words)4, in which strong colors and brushstrokes vied with each other. At the same time, she took active approaches to making prints of diverse types, including copperplate, woodblock, lithography, and silkscreen, as if oscillating between printing and the world of painting. She left behind more than 100 printed works, and said “my printmaking is like a partner running alongside my painting, and is sometimes not averse to suddenly making a spurt and taking the lead at a decisive moment.”5
Right： 《June-19-96》(1996) ething, aquatint, paper H82.5xW75cm ©︎Toeko Tatsuno
“I had a sense of space that could only exist in painting, and wanted to make it unique,”6 commented Tatsuno, whose abstract motifs have figures resembling the gravitational pull of the real earth, and make a peculiar pictorial space emerge before our eyes. While calmly observing the trends of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimal Art, and New Painting, she kept exploring modes of painting and established her own style. We would be delighted if this exhibition will help all who see it gain an understanding of Toeko Tatsuno and her works.
Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1950, Toeko Tatsuno graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (the current Tokyo University of the Arts) with a major in oil painting, and went on to complete the master’s program in graduate studies there. In 1995, at age 45, she became the youngest artist to hold a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo up to that time. In the following year, she was awarded the 46th Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists by the Minister of Education of Japan.
The main exhibitions at which she showed works are as follows: A Perspective on Contemporary Art: Metaphors and/or Symbols (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and National Museum of Art, Osaka, 1984); Europia ’89 Japan (Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium, 1989); Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky (Yokohama Museum of Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994); The 22nd Sao Paulo Biennial (1995); Tatsuno Toeko – 1986-1995 (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1995); Given Forms: Toeko Tatsuno and Toshio Shibata (National Art Center, Tokyo, 2012); Toeko Tatsuno’s Trajectory (BB Plaza Museum of Art, Hyogo, 2016); Toeko Tatsuno Retrospective (Okaya Art & Archaeological Museum, Nagano, 2015); Toeko Tatsuno On Papers: A Retrospective, 1969-2012 (Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and Nagoya City Art Museum, 2018).
References:
1.“7sho – Michinaru fuchi wo motomete – Toeko Tatsuno” (Chapter 7 – Seeking the arrangement of the unknown—Toeko Tatsuno), Does the Future Sleep Here?, National Museum of Western Art, 2024, p.222.
2.“Artist Talk No. 18: Toeko Tatsuo,” National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, November 14, 2008. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Z9Owx3N8w
3. “Intavyu Tatsuno Toeko: Kaiga to hanga no okan” (Interview with Toeko Tatsuno: Coming and going between painting and printing), Hanga Geijutsu, No.102, December 1998, p.69.
4.Gendai kaiga no tenbo: Heimen to kukan (Outlook for Contemporary Painting: Planes and Space), (18th Contemporary Japanese Art, Conception Division, 1987, p.45).
5.“Intavyu Tatsuno Toeko: Kaiga to hanga no okan” (Interview with Toeko Tatsuno: Coming and going between painting and printing), Hanga Geijutsu, No.102, December 1998, p.69.
6.“SAP Artistic Session (1): Toeko Tatsumi x Naofumi Maruyama, “Ima no e ni tsuite kataro” (Let’s talk about today’s pictures), Saison Art Program Journal, issue 4, September 30, 2000, p.54.