Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu (June 17, 1922 – March 9, 2011) was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator whose oeuvre spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings.

She is noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and has played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts.

Takaezu was known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects.

Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism.

She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.

Takaezu was born the middle child of eleven to Japanese immigrant parents in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, on 17 June 1922.

Her parents had immigrated from the Japanese town of Gushikawa on the island of Okinawa.

As a child, Takaezu helped her father and uncle farm watercress and raise honey bees.

Coming from a family of few means, she left high school to support her family.

Her parents maintained a traditional Japanese lifestyle: shoes were removed upon entering the house, breakfast consisted of miso soup and rice, sleeping was on the floor.

Takaezu did not learn to speak English until she entered first grade.

At the age of nine, her family moved to Maui, where her grade school—under the direction of a progressive principal—encouraged students to read and recite poetry and to draw.

It was there that she received her first exposure to the arts.

After graduating from high school in 1940, she went to stay with her older sisters in Honolulu, where she worked at the Hawaii Potter's Guild creating identical pieces from press molds.

The Hawaii Potter's Guild was a commercial pottery studio owned by the Gantt family.

It was there, during World War II, that Takaezu first worked with clay, producing ashtrays and other functional items in press molds.

While she hated creating hundreds of identical pieces, she appreciated that she could practice glazing.

At the pottery guild, Takaezu met Carl Massa, a New York sculptor who was with the Special Services Division of the U.S. Army.

Massa became an important inspiration for her, teaching and encouraging her to create sculpture and to read books such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, an interpretation of Van Gogh’s life story.

Eager to learn more about the lives and careers of artists, Takaezu enrolled in Saturday painting classes at the Honolulu Museum of Art School (1947 to 1949) studying with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford.

She then attended the University of Hawaiʻi (1948 and 1951) where she studied under Claude Horan beginning in 1947.

Horan was impressed by her talent and energy, and pushed Takaezu to study on the mainland.

He became an important influence in expanding her vision and helping her develop a strong technical foundation for her work.

Although clay was her primary interest, Takaezu also took classes in design, art history, and weaving.

In the textile program under the tutelage of Hester Robinson, she experimented with natural dyes and plant materials such as banana stocks.

These early flat-weave experiments sparked an enduring interest in textiles.

In 1948, Takaezu began teaching a ceramics class at the YWCA in Honolulu, where she discovered her deep love for teaching and inspiring students.

After the second year, she realized that becoming a fine art teacher required further study.

Her instinct for self-motivation–fostered by growing up in a large family—told her it was time to leave Hawaii and travel to the mainland.

A remarkable artist and influential teacher, Takaezu is recognized as one of a number of ceramic artists in the 1950s and 1960s who were instrumental in moving the practice of ceramics beyond a commercial trade to become a form of artistic expression.

A major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2023, and a traveling retrospective organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum to be launched at The Noguchi Museum in 2024 are reflective of the recent revival of interest in her practice and legacy.

From 1951 to 1954, she continued her studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1951), where she studied sculpture with William McVey and weaving with Marianne Strengell, and met Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, to whom she became an assistant in 1953.

A pivotal influence and mentor on her development as an artist, Grotell was, in Takaezu’s view, "an unusual and rare human being who felt it was important for students to become individuals. It was through her criticism that I began to discover who I was."

After becoming Grotell’s assistant, Takaezu also began her teaching career, instructing summer courses at the Cranbrook Academy from 1954 to 1956.

Although working in clay was her main interest, while studying with Marianne Strengell at Cranbrook, Takaezu became interested in the creative potential of fiber.

Responding to the texture of yarn and its rich color possibilities, she approached weaving as a different way of thinking and developing ideas.

Takaezu earned an award after her first year of study, which acknowledged her as an outstanding student in the clay department.

She also taught summer sessions at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1955–64), where she became head of the ceramic department.

A grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 1964 allowed Takaezu to break from full-time teaching and take a studio in Clinton, New Jersey, where she took on apprentices throughout her career.

In a 2003 oral history interview with the Archives of American Art she stated that the spot was ideal for her because it was "far away from New York City but not that far."