CHUZO TAMOTZU (1891-1975) Santa Fe art colony oil painting by well known Japanese and New Mexico artist

CHUZO TAMOTZU (1891-1975) Santa Fe art colony oil painting by well known Japanese and New Mexico artist

Oil on panel, 15" by 10", and narrow inexpensive modern frame, the subject a mysterious white cat curled around a vase of flowers, in the manner of Foujita, signed at lower right by the well listed Japanese-born painter who worked for many years in New York and finally in Santa Fe, CHUZO TOMATZU (1891-1975). Tomatzu is not a household name today, and his works are scarce, but he left behind a long legacy that bridged Asian and western art influences. Born in Kagoshima in southern Japan, Tomatzu (also spelled sometimes as "Tomatsu") was working in New York by 1920, remaining there until the 1940's. While there he studied at the Art Students League. In the creative years between the wars, he joined with a lot of Japanese artists in New York, exhibited with them. It was during this period that he created many realism-style lithographs in the then popular regionalist WPA style. Exhibiting at the Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy, Society of Independent Artists, and Woodstock Art Association, he achieved recognition. During World War II he worked for the United States, preparing psychological materials to be used against the Japanese in the war effort. By the late 1940's, Tomatzu had moved to the Santa Fe art colony in New Mexico, where in the post-war years he became a familiar and much-beloved figure around the artistic town. Photos on the net, taken probably in about the year 1960, show a classical elderly very lean Asian man, such as one would see in a scroll painting, with long beard flowing from his chin. A friend of John Sloan, he went on to occupy the latter's studio after his death. Tamotzu would have rubbed shoulders with most of the artists who were still living in Santa Fe at mid century, including but hardly limited to Louis Ribak, Beatrice Mandelman, Olive Rush, Stuart Eddy, and Robert Philly. His extensive personal papers and archives, now in the Archives of American Art, and at the University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research, provide researchers today with a rare window into the art scene there at the time. Tamotzu created lithographs, drawings, and paintings. This painting is a small gem by a master hand. Note the richly worked paint in the flowers, and the expression on the cat, the entire work reminiscent of Foujita and his famous fascination with cats in art. The work was recently cleaned professionally. The present frame should be discarded in favor of a proper frame which will truly complete this fine painting. Shipping wizard figures are guesstimates. SEE HUNDREDS OF OTHER WORKS OF ART NOW IN MY SHOP.

Item ID: JB02538

$1,750 USD

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