Kenzo Okada

Kenzo Okada (岡田 謙三, Okada Kenzō; born on September 28, 1902, died on July 25, 1982) was a Japanese-born American painter and the first Japanese-American artist working in the Abstract Expressionist style to receive international acclaim.

Okada was born September 28, 1902, in Yokohama, Japan.

His father, a wealthy industrialist, did not support his son's desire to be an artist.

When his father died, Okada entered the department of Western painting at Tokyo School of Fine Arts (present Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music).

His classmates include Gen'ichirō Inokuma, Takeo Yamaguchi, and Ryōhei Koiso.

In 1924, Okada dropped out from Tokyo School of Fine Arts and left for Paris where he studied with fellow Japanese expatriate Tsuguharu Foujita, executing paintings of urban subjects.

In 1927, he exhibited work in the Salon d'Automne.

In 1927, Okada returned to Japan and within a year he had his first one-person show at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo.

In 1929, his works were selected for the sixteenth Second Section Exhibition (Nika-ten 二科展), an annual salon organized by the modernist artist association Second Section Society (Nika-kai 二科会).

Thereafter, Okada's works were displayed in the Second Section Exhibition every year.

Okada became popular in the Second Section Society for his luscious portraits of women and landscapes of French cityscapes.

After the 29th Venice Biennale, Okada spent increasing time in Japan.

Throughout the 1930s, Okada's style gradually changed from the warm tones reminiscent of Marie Laurencin and Henri Matisse immediately after his return to Japan to the distinctive surface in cold colour, which were created by applying layers of colour, and motifs reminiscent of downtown Paris, such as girls and flower sellers.

In 1937, the Second Section Society admitted Okada's (along with Tamiji Kitagawa, Keiji Shimazaki, Kōnosuke Tamura, and among others) full membership.

Okada's success continued and he was awarded the Showa Western Painting Encouragement Prize (昭和洋画奨励賞) in 1939.

In the same year he was also invited to teach oil painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Nihon University with Kinosuke Ebihara and other oil painters.

Later, Okada was evacuated to Miyagi Prefecture.

After the war, Okada quickly returned to the reconstructed Second Section Society and began to work again on the figurative groups of nude/clothed women that he had worked on before the war.

In 1947, he was awarded the first Group Membership Effort Prize (会員努力賞) from the Second Section Society and attracted attention for his refined, lyrical style.

From that year, he began teaching oil painting at the Musashino Art University and at the Tama Art University, and training younger artists.

As Okada's reputation in the art world grew again, he was increasingly busy with illustrations and cover paintings for newspapers and magazines.

Under these circumstances, his style gradually changed.

From 1947 onwards, the shapes of figures and objects that compose his pictures gradually became simpler.

Okada himself later suggested that the reason behind this stylistic change was a sense of powerlessness and mistrust of his own skills and techniques, which he had developed up to that point.

Okada became aware of the deadlock in his own creation and sought a change in the environment, which led him to the US in 1950.

In 1950, Okada moved to New York City.

What awaited him there was Abstract Expressionism, which was then sweeping the American art world.

Later Okada recalled that at first he could not understand Abstract Expressionism at all.

Okada was rather confused by the works he saw, and spent nearly three years after his arrival in the US in a state of uncertainty.

After a period of trial and error, Okada developed a technique of wiping off the paint and applying a layer of loosely dissolved paint to the surface of the painting to create an abstract painting with a unique texture and a poetic, lyrical quality.

The art dealer Betty Parsons, who was promoting Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, visited Okada's studio in 1952, recognised his talent, and supported him for the next 30 years.

In 1953, Parsons mounted Okada's first New York solo show at her Betty Parsons Gallery.

Okada's works exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery attracted much attention and were soon added to the collections of major museums in New York such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, establishing Okada's firm reputation on the New York art scene.

Moreover, through Parsons, Okada gained access to the inner circle of Abstract Expressionism.

Okada became friends with Rothko, Newman, and many other Abstract Expressionists.

The American artist Michelle Stuart wrote: "when Okada came to the United States he was already a mature painter, well considered in his native Japan. To American abstraction Okada brought civilized restraint, an elegance of device and an unusual gift for poetic transmutation of natural forms."

At the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, Okada’s work was exhibited in the Japan Pavilion and he won the Astorre Meyer Prize and UNESCO Prize.

At the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, Okada’s work was exhibited in the Japan Pavilion (representative: Shūzō Takiguchi; assistant commissioner: Ichirō Fukuzawa and Yoshiaki Tōno) alongside that of five other Japanese artists (Ichirō Fukuzawa, Kawabata Ryūshi, Seison Maeda, Yoshi Kinouchi, Shindō Tsuji), and Okada won Astorre Meyer Prize and UNESCO Prize.

Okada's work has been featured in retrospective exhibitions since the 1960s, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1965, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in 1966, the Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo in 1982, the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama in 1989, the University of Iowa Museum of Art in 2000, and the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2003.

Okada’s works are also held in major American museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.