Masaaki Tanaka (artist)

Masaaki Tanaka ( Japanese 田中 正 秋 , Tanaka Masaaki ; * 1947 in Setagaya , Tokyo Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese artist and painter. He is the eldest son of Toshiko and Akio Tanaka. His father was a painter of western art .

education

Influenced by his father, he came into contact with painting at an early age and already won art competitions in elementary school. In 1967 he began his studies at the Musashino Art School west of Tokyo in Tokyo Prefecture with a major in oil painting, focusing on Western style. However, he developed a great interest in graphics and was heavily involved with etchings, lithography, woodcuts and screen printing. In 1970, before he graduated, he received his own exhibition for his copperplate engravings in a gallery in the Ginza district of Tokyo . Further exhibitions followed, while in the first two years after graduating in 1971 he taught art at his university and became acquainted with Japanese artists and their styles. He teaches himself the technique of screen printing, which soon becomes his preferred technique. The themes of his pictures are repeatedly Japanese festivals ( matsuri ), which he reproduces in bright colors. In 1973 he made his first trip to Europe; In 1974 he again exhibited 38 works in his own exhibition at Isetan in Shinjuku and married his former fellow student Chikako Inomata. In 1976 he was allowed to exhibit his works in the "Exhibition of 120 selected artists of today" ( 今日 の 精 鋭 120 人 展 , kyō no seiei 120-ninten ) in Tōkyō Central Bijutsukan ( 東京 セ ン ト ラ ル 美術館 ) in the Ginza district and the following year he got his first Exhibitions in Paris and Düsseldorf. In 1979 he traveled to the USA, where the local museums became aware of him and gradually bought and exhibited his works.

His success and his international recognition are particularly evident in the 1980s, when from 1982 to 1991 his art was shown weekly on the cover of the Shūkan Shinchō magazine with a circulation of over half a million copies and in 1983, when the Japanese government gave the American one President Reagan gives a signed screen print of Tanakas during his visit to Japan.

swell

• Masaaki Tanaka - Japanese Festivals: Catalog accompanying the exhibition in the Wellmann Gallery, Düsseldorf, October 1978
• The artist's own homepage