(5 January 1905 in
Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous cit ...
– 16 January 2008) was a Japanese ''
Nihonga
''Nihonga'' (, "Japanese-style paintings") are Japanese paintings from about 1900 onwards that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials. While based on traditions over a thousand years ...
'' painter.
She is known for her series of
Mount Fuji and other mountains, painted in bold colours such as red.
Biography
Tamako Kataoka was born in Sapporo, Japan in 1905. In 1923, she enrolled to study the traditional Japanese painting style Nihonga at the Women’s Special School of Art in Tokyo. She decided to further her studies and acquired a teaching post at Ooka state primary school in Yokohama for the next thirty years, and at the Women’s University of Fine Art for another fifteen. In 1962, Kataoka traveled to Europe, visiting France, Italy, and the UK. It was during this forty-day excursion that the western influence in her work stemmed.
Art critic Sarah Custen describes Kataoka's unique response to the influence of popular American artists: "Kataoka’s landscapes evoke
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...
, and her ‘Countenance’ series is undeniably reminiscent of Warhol’s pop art, yet her work is far from imitative. While much of Japanese art is dedicated to faithful replication, Kataoka’s paintings sing as true, individual expression." For example, Kataoka often uses gold leaf and silver to highlight portions of her prints, a technique seen in many Nihonga paintings before her. “By painting a picture of a traditional scene…one can participate in a process of defining what a tradition is.”
By the mid sixties, she became the department head of the
Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts. It was here that she taught students who were eager to modernize the style of traditional Japanese art. After seeing her work, a fellow artist by the name of
Kobayashi Kokei recognized the greatness in it. He exclaimed that her work straddled “the line between being inferior and an authentic masterpiece” and encouraged her to continue. She designed one of the curtains at the Nagoya Kabuki
Misono-za theatre called "Flowers at Mount Fuji" (富士に献花).
Kataoka was later appointed a member of the
Japan Art Academy in 1982, and awarded the
Order of Culture
The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...
in 1989.
See also
*
Seison Maeda (1885–1977), one of the leading ''Nihonga'' painters
*
List of Nihonga painters
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
Gallery Sakura , Kataoka Tamako
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kataoka, Tamako
1905 births
2008 deaths
20th-century Japanese painters
20th-century Japanese women artists
Japanese centenarians
Nihonga painters
People from Sapporo
Recipients of the Order of Culture
Women centenarians
Artists from Hokkaido