- Kenzo Okada
Kenzo Okada (1902 - 1982) was an American painter of Japanese birth. In 1922 he entered the department of
Western painting at Tokyo School of Fine Arts, called todayTokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music , but in 1924 left forFrance where he studied with fellow Japanese expatriateTsugouharu Foujita , executing paintings of urban subjects. In 1927 he returned toJapan , where he exhibited widely.In 1950 he moved to
New York City , where he produced abstract paintings. Undoubtedly stimulated byAbstract Expressionism , these nevertheless display a strong Japanese sensibility and feeling for form. His paintings from the 1950s reveal subtle changes in the natural world through the use of imagery constructed with delicate, sensitive colour tonalities, floating within the compositional space. In 1953 he began to exhibit his abstract expressionist paintings with theBetty Parsons Gallery in New York City.During the 1970s he painted numerous works that used as a point of departure the reinterpretation of the decorative effects of traditional
Japanese painting .Okada evokes the aura of landscape by using earth colors, abstract patterns hinting at rocks and flowers, and an overall haziness that makes his scenes look submerged in water. Bringing an Asian sensitivity to the
New York School of abstraction, Okada distills the essence of nature into his painting, making it seem elemental and thussublime . Okada became friends withMark Rothko and many other abstract expressionists, especially the early color field painters. His sensitive and personal style ofabstract expressionism , with his asian roots, relates directly to bothcolor field painting andlyrical abstraction .ee also
*
Abstract expressionism
*Color Field painting
*Lyrical Abstraction
*New York School External links
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/okada68.htm Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview with Kenzo Okada, 1968]
References
* Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50666793&tab=holdings "New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,"] (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
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