Sold – Paul Shusaku Foujino, Vers la joie, Gouache and collage, circa 1960
Description
What I like
I like this work of cutting and gluing gouache paper, which can be linked to the work of Henri Matisse at the end of his life, but used in a very personal way by our artist of Japanese origin, with the use of pieces no longer united but bearing the trace of time.
He knows how to create a colored mass, fairly compact, centered, in which blues and blacks play, brightened up with pink, olive green and yellow accents.
We are faced with a typical work of the 1960s, representative of the colorist talents of the Second School of Paris, which knew how to welcome foreign talents after 1945 as it had before the war: we think of Staël, Poliakov, and to others.
The balance of this composition is remarkable in view of the diversity and the number of colored elements that make it up: we feel the spirituality of the artist, who works for Joy, which we can still hope for, even after the horrors of World War II.
I love this hope of peace, of joy, ultimately of happiness.
I like the strong work of this artist who has been exhibited in major institutions, and more particularly this period when the cut colors are united, before his return to the use of gradients, then his use of acrylic.
I like the fact that the colors of the glued elements are not united, but that we feel a passage of time, a use of previously gouached papers.
Technical description
Paul Shusaku FOUJINO (1925-1982)
Vers la joie, Towards joy, circa 1960
The work is a square presented on one of its angles, thus forming a diamond, and is composed of torn and cut-out gouache papers, assembled and glued on an unbleached beige canvas; it is titled middle right and signed bottom left.
Wooden sticks painted in yellow and glass.
The fact that there are color inequalities in the cut-out papers is, in my opinion, voluntary.
Dimensions and weight
Height: 79 cm – Width: 79 cm – Depth: 2 cm
Weight: 5 kg
Mix & Match
This strong work, so typical of the 1960s, is a miracle that can adorn any wall, because its author is in full possession of his talents and has been able to create a work that lives by itself. It is therefore quite indifferent that it overcomes antique, vintage or contemporary furniture. It will light up an entire wall, but on the opposite wall you can have a 17th century Madonna, a large orientalist or romantic painting, whatever. What it will not support are false, inauthentic works, which are only effects.For my part, how I would like to see it dialogue with the Adirondack armchairs by Philippe Parent from the 1980s, whose green will play with its olive accents, with the Grass Hopper armchairs by Sonja Wasseur from the 1960s/1970s, for the purity of their line. I would like to see it illuminated by a sober but beautiful lamp, like the resin and chromed metal lamp from the felice antonio botta workshop, from the 1970s/1980s.On another wall, I would hang Daniel de Linière’s small tapestry from the 1960s, Vent d’été, dynamic, whose beige background echoes that of Foujino’s work.In a fun way, I would choose to bring Jean de Lespinasse’s curious vase to life alongside it, with its asymmetrical shape and dominant blue color, like this collage.Finally, what refinement if we make it rub shoulders with the very important sculpture of Guillaume Leunens, Colonnes, 1966!I realize that I quote above all works of art, strong and endowed with a real presence, to echo the Joy of our work!
Description
To know more
The painter
Paul Shusaku Foujino (1925-1982)After studying art and philosophy in Japan, Paul Foujino, born in 1925 in Shiga, arrived in Paris in 1952. Two years earlier he discovered Cézanne and Renoir in the new Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura. Concerned with a synthesis of the oriental gesture, at work in calligraphy in particular, with Western constructive logic, he will receive, in parallel with an academic training at the Beaux-Arts, the modernist initiation of Joseph Lacasse which will mark him deeply, placing his painting in the movement of the Paris School of the post-war period. After a solitary period, he moved with his wife Marie Takada to Fontenay-aux-Roses in 1962 in the former studio of the painter Jean-Paul Laurens where he worked until his death. Like Matisse, whose paper cut-outs he had seen at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs the previous year, he found in this particular technique the synthesis he sought after. His gesture consists of directly cutting planes in color, then proceeding by assembly. This use of cut-out paper renews his painting and leads him to design a system of structured plans which will meet the interest of architects, in particular those of the Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture and Paul Chemetov who will solicit him from 1965 for many projects. At the same time, his work in the studio continues.In the 1970s, gradations of values appear in Foujino’s collages, which evoke a more illusionist space and depth. This search for light also echoes the fading of prints such as those by Hokusai or Hiroshige. At the end of this decade Foujino made a return to the technique of painting, resuming his acrylic compositions on very large canvases. Foujino died of cardiac arrest at the age of 57 on March 1, 1982. He had just completed his work at the church of Cuvat in Haute-Savoie. Painting the entire surface in 15 days himself, he had transfigured it into a space where, in the luminous white, wide bands of yellow, red ocher and gray green radiate joyfully from the choir and a 15th century Christ, like a scenography of the resurrection. This work appears as the formal and spiritual conclusion of Foujino’s work, part of whose ashes rest in the church. Paul Foujino has been represented by the Galerie Jacques Massol in Paris and the Drian Gallery in London
Posthumous exhibitions :
1986 Monumental tapestry (Manufacture des Gobelins) Bercy Ministry of Finance
1997 APC, rue Madame Paris
1999 Ministry of Finance of Bercy, Paul Foujino: Retrospective
2002 Museum of Shiga, Japan, Paul Foujino: Retrospective
2006 Kamakura Museum of Modern Art (Japan)
2007 Fontenay-aux-Roses media library, Paul Foujino: an artist’s gesture
2013 Donation of a Foujino collection to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
2013-2015 Musée National d’Art Moderne, Modernités plurielles
A beautiful authentic 1960 painting at a fair price
This cut-out gouache has been carefully selected for its aesthetic qualities, its originality and its fair price. Our choice favors above all the acuity of the design and the beauty of the realization, guarantee of a valorization of your new acquisition in your interior and of an ability to dialogue with your furniture, to agree and to mix to create unique decoration.Buying works of art from the 1960s is surely a reasonable investment, so great is the appetite for this period and the quality of the works of the Second School of Paris.
Additional information
| Weight | 5 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 79 × 79 cm |
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