, styled as Takanori Oguiss, was a Japanese figurative painter who lived and worked most of his life in France. He is known by his cityscape paintings.

Life and career

Born in

Inazawa is a city located in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 135,580 in 54,999 households, and a population density of . The total area of the city was . Geography Inazawa is located in the flatlands of far western Aic ...

, Takanori Ogisu was the son of a landowner in the

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most pop ...

region. Ogisu went to Tokyo in 1920 to become a painter. He studied at the Kawabata painting school (川端画学校, Kawabata Gagakkō) under

Fujishima Takeji was a Japanese people, Japanese painter, noted for his work in developing Romanticism and impressionism within the ''yoga (art), yōga'' (Western-style) art movement in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese painting. In his later years, he ...

, then went to the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (precursor of Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku), where he graduated in 1929. In the same year the painter

Yuzo Saeki was a Japanese painter, noted for his work in developing modernism and Fauvist Expressionism within the ''yōga'' (Western-style) art movement in early twentieth-century Japanese painting. Biography Saeki was born in Osaka as the son of a Bud ...

, who had come back from France, visited Ogisu together with Takeo Yamaguchi and encouraged them to study in France. Ogisu and Yamaguchi followed the advice and went to Paris. They were part of a group of Japanese painters who went to study in France, such as

Foujita was a Japanese–French painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan, who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings. At the height of his fame in Paris, during the 1920s, he was known for his portraits of nudes using an opalescen ...

, Inokuma, and Sadami Yokote, in 1927. Ogisu settled in the district of Montparnasse, and frequented the painters of La Ruche, being particularly impressed by the paintings of

Maurice Utrillo Maurice Utrillo (), born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painte ...

. In the 1930s, he occupied a studio at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, on rue Ordener, not far from his friends Inokuma and Foujita. After a return to Japan, on the orders of the Vichy government (when he was appointed as a painter of the Japanese armies during the Second World War, but served only a few weeks on the two and a half years he was there, spending the rest of the time painting in Inazawa), Ogisu established himself definitively in 1948 in France, painting in bright colors the old picturesque districts, the old shops, haberdashery, paper mills, wine and liquor stores, wood, coal, and flower markets. In 1951, he wrote and illustrated ''Nouvelles de Paris'', published by Mainichi. He also traveled to Amsterdam, Ghent, Antwerp and Venice, composing colorful works with unusual framing.

Death and legacy

La_tombe_du_peintre_japonais_Takanori_OGUISS

His last exhibition during his lifetime took place at the museum of Saint-Denis in 1986. He died the same year and is buried in the

Montmartre cemetery The Cemetery of Montmartre (french: link=no, Cimetière de Montmartre) is a cemetery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France, that dates to the early 19th century. Officially known as the Cimetière du Nord, it is the third largest necropolis ...

. A museum is dedicated to him in the Japanese city of Inazawa where his Montmartre city studio has been reconstituted.

References

{{authority control 1901 births 1986 deaths Japanese painters