Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886 - 1968) French-Japanese painter. Ink on Paper. Measure 10"in H x 22"in W and 15 1/2"in H x 27 1/2"in W with frame. Immediately after graduating secondary school, Foujita wished to study in France, but on the advice of Mori Ogai (his father's senpai military physician) he decided to study western art in Japan first.In 1910, when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. His paintings during the period before he moved to France were often signed "Fujita", rather than the francized "Foujita" which he later adopted. After the breakup of his third marriage, and his flight to Brazil in 1931 (with his new love, Mady), Foujita traveled and painted all over Latin America, giving hugely successful exhibitions along the way. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, 60,000 people attended his exhibition, and more than 10,000 queued up for his autograph. In 1932 I have contributed a work to the Pax Mundi, a large folio book produced by the League of Nations calling for a prolonged world peace. However, by 1933 he was welcomed back as a minor celebrity to Japan where he stayed and became a noted producer of militaristic propaganda during the war. For example, in 1938 the Imperial Navy Information Office supported his visit to China as an official war artist.Foujita returned to France after the war. In 1955 he became a French citizen, thereafter renouncing his Japanese citizenship. Today, Foujita's works can be found in the Bridgestone Museum of Art and in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and more than 100 in the Hirano Masakichi Art Museum in Akita. After the Second World War, painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi opposed Tsuguharu Foujita's art show at the Kennedy Galleries. Kuniyoshi labeled Foujita a fascist, imperialist, and expansionist.

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