| 'Léonard' Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) was a French-Japanese painter and printmaker and is probably most famous for his paintings of cats, which appeared in almost every piece he produced. His A Book of Cats, is much sought after and sells in the tens of thousand dollars at auction.
Born in Tokyo, he studied at the University of Fine Arts and Music before moving to Paris in 1913, There his blend of traditional Japanese ink painting with the techniques of Western oil painting was lauded in the city's avant-garde art circles. He embraced the bohemian lifestyle of the era and associated with the famous artists of the day: Modigliani, Gris, and Picasso. Even amongst his contemporaries he stood out with his gold earrings, round glasses and bowl-cut hairstyle.
He was known for his pairings of nudes, using a milky white colour for both subject and background, separated with broad, black lines. Many of these paintings included shaggy cats and fabrics as contrast.
Foujita gained recognition in France and internationally and embraced his fame. He drove a sports car with a small Rodin sculpture mounted on the bonnet and when faced with an enormous tax bill, he fled briefly to New York with his lover, abandoning the first of his five spouses in Paris.
During the second world war, Foujita returned to Japan and supported Japan's war effort, painting works of propaganda. One of his works Final Fighting at Attu, depicted heroic Japanese soldiers in a final stand against their American counterparts,
On his return to Paris he was shunned for supporting the enemy and he moved to Switzerland for a period of self-imposed exile.
Converting to Catholicism in the 1950s, he adopted the name 'Léonard' and began to incorporate religious themes into his art, culminating in the Foujuta Catherdral constructed in Reims in the mid-sixties with design and frescos painted by the artist.
He continued to produce art, less hedonistic than that of the 1920s but still including cats, until his death in Switzerland in 1968.
You can read more about Foujita's fascinating life here and here. |
