Summer special exhibition "Tsuguharu Foujita in the Time of War 1936-1945"
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Exhibition Overview
The Karuizawa Ando Museum of Art (43-10 Karuizawahigashi, Karuizawa-machi, Kitasaku-gun, Nagano Prefecture) will hold a special summer exhibition, "Tsuguharu Foujita in the Time of War 1936-1945," from Thursday, August 3, 2023 to Tuesday, September 12, 2023.
When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Fujita returned to Japan and decided to settle there, setting up a home and studio in Kojimachi Rokubancho, Tokyo, where he energetically continued to create. Although he briefly traveled back and forth to France from 1939 to 1940, he spent the turbulent times of the war and postwar period in Japan. In this project, we will be exhibiting for the first time the original 100-size poster painting "The Brave Kamikaze Special Attack Force" (c. 1944) from our museum's collection, as well as landscape paintings he painted during this period, such as "Futsuingawachi, Annan Town" (1943) and "The Day the Three Towns of Wuhan Fall" (c. 1938).
We hope to use this opportunity to think about "Fujita Tsuguharu in the Age of War" through the words left by the contemporary artist himself and the works in our collection, and to understand what Foujita was thinking about when he created his works during this period. In addition, with the cooperation of the Domon Ken Memorial Museum in Yamagata, we will also introduce valuable photographic portraits of Foujita taken by Domon Ken during this period.
Works and materials to be exhibited
- Works by Fujita from the 1930s to 1940s
- Portrait photographs of Fujita taken by Ken Domon (courtesy of the Ken Domon Memorial Museum)
- Contemporary bound books and postcards by Fujita
- Materials relating to Fujita and his contemporaries (courtesy of Mugonkan)
- "The Great East Asian War: Naval Art" by Tsuguharu Foujita, Hakutei Ishii, Kenichi Nakamura, and others (1943, published by the Greater Japan Marine Art Association)


