Takao Tanabe, CMOBCRCA (born 16 September 1926) is a Canadian artist who painted abstractly for decades, but over time, his paintings became nature-based.
Biography
Born Takao Izumi in Seal Cove, today part of Prince Rupert, British Columbia,[1] the son of a commercial fisherman, where he was the fifth of seven children. Tanabe and his family were interned with other Japanese-Canadians in the British Columbia interior during World War II.[2] They were relocated first to a camp at Hasting Park in Vancouver and Lemon Creek[3] in the Kootenays in the summer of 1942, where they were expected to build their own internment camp.[4]
Tanabe attended the Winnipeg School of Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba (1946–1949), initially enrolling in a sign painting class as it would provide him with employable skills before becoming fascinated with art's potential outside of a commercial context.[4] Tanabe studied in this period with Joseph Plaskett, who introduced the young artist to the work of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and became a friend of Tanabe's for life.[4] He then studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York City, New York with Hans Hofmann (1951) and Reuben Tam (1951-1952).[5] Upon returning to Vancouver in 1952, Tanabe took up mural painting and completed his first commissioned work, a mural for the University of British Columbia Art Gallery entitled The World We Live In in 1953.[4] Tanabe received an Emily Carr Scholarship that same year; the news was delivered to him in a phone call from Lawren Harris.[4] He went to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, UK (1953–1954) and during that time travelled widely in Europe. From 1959 to 1960, he studied Sumi-e and calligraphy at Tokyo University in Japan on a Canada Council Scholarship.[5][2]
His art has gone through many different phases.[7] In his "inscapes" (he called his paintings after a term used by Gerald Manley Hopkins) of the late 1950s, Tanabe explored his memories of lit interiors, painting them abstractly and expressing them with calligraphic signs.[2] His works of this period often blur the line between figurative and abstract painting.[4]
From 1961 to 1968, Tanabe taught at the Vancouver Art School. Throughout the 1960s, he became well-established in the Vancouver art world and continued to exhibit his work across Canada, painting more large-scale murals in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina, and Edmonton.[4] In 1968, he worked in Philadelphia, moving in 1969 to New York City where he lived until 1972. In New York, he painted hard-edge geometric abstracts.[2] From 1973, he was head of the art program and artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. By then, he consciously considered landscapes as a subject, while progressively eliminating references to the specific.[8] In 1980, he returned to British Columbia where he lives and works on Vancouver Island. He is considered today a painter who primarily evokes the landscape of British Columbia in minimalist but detailed paintings.[9]
...I try to avoid brush marks so that it looks as though the paint has just floated on...[11]
Major solo exhibitions
Printmaker (2023), Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC[12]
A Modern Landscape (2021), West Vancouver Art Museum, West Vancouver, BC [13]
Sumie: Ink Brush Paintings (2016), Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, Burnaby, BC[14]
Chronicles of Form and Place: Works on Paper (2011), Burnaby Art Gallery (touring exhibition, to McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton; Nanaimo Art Gallery; The Reach, Abbotsford)[15]
Mountains in Winter (2009), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (touring exhibition, to Penticton Art Gallery; West Vancouver Art Museum)[16]
Takao Tanabe (2005), Vancouver Art Gallery (touring exhibition, to Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario)[17]
At the Heffel auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art, May 23, 2024, Lot 004, Nootka 1/91: in Hanna Channel, acrylic on canvas, 27 x 59 in, 68.6 x 149.9 cm, Estimate: $60,000 - $80,000 CAD, Sold for: $451,250 (including Buyer's Premium).[21]
References
^ abBrennan, Brian. "Takao Tanabe". www.gallerieswest.ca. Galleries West Magazine. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
^ abcd"Takao Tanabe". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
Thom, Ian M. (2005). Takao Tanabe. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery and Douglas and McIntyre. ISBN1553651413. Retrieved 13 May 2024.
"Chronicles of Form and Place : Works on Paper by Takao Tanabe" (2012), Darren J. Marten, Ihor Holibizky, Denise Leclerc (Burnaby Art Gallery) ISBN9780980996296
"Takao Tanabe: Life & Work" (2023), Ian M. Thom, (Art Canada Institute) ISBN978-1-4871-0325-5
Thom, Ian M. (2023). Takao Tanabe: Printmaker. Kelowna: Kelowna Art Gallery. Retrieved 16 December 2023.
