The gentle dream of Togo Seiji

The Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with a retrospective devoted to the artist with whom it all began: Togo Seiji, born 130 years ago. The Shinjuku museum, known worldwide for holding one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, actually opened in 1976 as the Seiji Togo Art Museum, and today holds some 240 works and documents by the painter, most of them donated by his family after his death. Born in 1897 in Kagoshima, Togo was one of the leading figures of Western-style Japanese painting, known as yōga, and for decades a central member of the Nika Society, founded to promote modern art in Japan. He made his debut very young under the banner of the avant-garde: in 1916, aged 19, he won the Nika Prize with Woman with Parasol, considered one of the country's first avant-garde works. In 1921 he left for Europe, where he stayed for seven years. In Italy he came close to Futurism, while in France he studied old master painting in museums and met artists such as Picasso, from whom he learned the importance of finding an unmistakable style of his own. Returning to Japan in 1928, he became part of the modern Tokyo rebuilt after the Great Kanto Earthquake, also working as an illustrator, designer and stage designer. From the mid-1930s, partly through his collaboration with Léonard Foujita, he developed the figure that made him hugely popular: elegant, melancholy women with soft outlines, immersed in dreamlike atmospheres, soon dubbed "Seiji bijin", the Seiji beauties. A recognisable style that also appeared on book covers, packaging and advertising materials. In his later years, travelling around the world, he broadened his repertoire to the landscapes and cultures of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, experimenting with a more textured style of painting. He died in 1978. The exhibition traces all these phases: from early Futurist works such as Playing the Contrabass (1915) and Surrealistic Stroll (1929) to the famous female figures of Black Gloves (1933) and Nostalgia (1959), through to large late canvases such as Tassili (1974), inspired by a journey to Algeria, and Queen of Ramses (1976). Alongside the paintings, travel sketches and graphic materials, from packaging for a confectionery shop to insurance brochures designed from his works, show how his art became part of everyday life in 20th-century Japan.