A visitor to Takao Tanabe: Printmaker at Glenbow at The Edison. Photo: Mike Tan

Artist Feature: Takao Tanabe

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This fall Glenbow is thrilled to be hosting the touring exhibition Takao Tanabe: Printmaker, organized and circulated by the Kelowna Art Gallery and curated by Ian M. Thom. Learn more about Tanabe’s extraordinary career and incredible contributions to art in Canada.

In the winter of 1977, Glenbow had barely settled into its new home at 130 9 Ave SE when the museum opened a brand-new contemporary art exhibit. “Takao Tanabe’s solo show at Glenbow splendid and long overdue,” declared the headline in the Calgary Herald. Critic Carol Hogg explained, “In recognition of his growing stature as one of Canada’s leading contemporary artists, a solo show has been organized […] It is a splendid and long overdue exhibit, featuring the highly sophisticated landscape abstractions that are Tanabe’s hallmark.”[1] Organized by Nancy Dillow (then at the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery), the show was a milestone for Glenbow and for Tanabe, who was rapidly becoming one of the most influential artists in Western Canada.

Tanabe was born in 1926 in Seal Cove, British Columbia, and spent his early childhood there; in 1937, he and his family moved to Vancouver. They were living there when the Second World War began, and when Canada declared war on Japan in December 1941. The Canadian government quickly began targeting Japanese Canadians, designating them as “enemy aliens” and using the War Measures Act to suspend their rights. In 1942, the government forced Japanese Canadians living in a large coastal zone in British Columbia to leave, transporting them to internment camps or requiring them to become indentured labourers further east. Tanabe, his parents, and his younger siblings went to the internment camp at Lemon Creek, in the interior of British Columbia, where internees had to build their own homes. There was no school at the camp, and Tanabe found it impossible to continue his education.

Some of Tanabe’s older siblings had become labourers and settled in Winnipeg, and in 1944, he was released from Lemon Creek and joined them. In his early years in the city, he worked in manual labour. In 1946, he enrolled at the Winnipeg School of Art — he heard the school did not require applicants to have completed high school, and he thought he might pursue a career as a sign painter. He soon determined he was interested in art, and he received strong encouragement from his teacher Joseph Plaskett, who later recalled him as a “star” student, saying, “He had the real talent…. He was my best pupil. Outstanding.”[2]

Takao Tanabe, Untitled D, 1958, Collection of Glenbow. Gift of the artist, 2008.
Takao Tanabe, Untitled D, 1958, Collection of Glenbow. Gift of the artist, 2008.

Tanabe graduated in 1949 and the 1950s were a crucial decade of artistic development in his practice. In the fall of 1950, he went to New York, a city with unparalleled opportunities to study abstract art. In 1953, he received an Emily Carr Scholarship that enabled him to visit Europe: he took classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, and he also visited Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Finally, in 1959 he received a Canada Council grant which led him to visit Japan, studying calligraphy and sumi-e painting in Tokyo. All these experiences helped shape his painting and a unique approach to abstract art, as can be seen in compositions like Untitled D, 1958.

By the early 1960s, Tanabe had begun experimenting with Geometric Abstraction. In explaining this shift in his practice, he said, “It was a reaction against abstract expressionism. It was drilled into one that the space had to be shallow, you went in and you had to come out again, space should be shallow all the way around, all through, no depth, nothing like that…OK, I decided, I will make it as complicated as possible, bouncing back and forth, and be completely confusing. It doesn’t matter as long as I am not restricting myself to a shallow abstract expressionist feeling.”[3] Complex and dramatic lines and forms bouncing with movement appeared in many of his works, from acrylic paintings to screenprints like Window, 1967, and Cut Corners: Kite, 1968. Within a few years, however, Tanabe turned to a new challenge.

As a young man, Tanabe worked as a handyman at The Banff School of Fine Arts (today the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity). In 1972 he returned there to teach painting during the summer session, and a year later he was appointed head of the painting division. His leadership would be transformative: he established new guidelines for faculty, and he helped create the Walter Phillips Gallery. The appointment came with his own studio, and he began an enormous new body of work — hundreds of paintings, drawings, and prints that represented the Prairies. It was a bold shift in his practice, but one that he felt ready for: he later observed, “I had travelled across them in the 1950s and I had thought they were an impossible subject to paint. In 1972, I was able to cope with the challenge of the big prairie.”[4] With works like Prairie Hills with Cloud, 1980, and Yellow Field, 1980, he presented his own vision of enormous Prairie spaces and skies.

Takao Tanabe, Prairie Hills with Cloud, 1980, Collection of Glenbow.
Takao Tanabe, Prairie Hills with Cloud, 1980, Collection of Glenbow.
Takao Tanabe, Yellow Field, 1980, Collection of Glenbow.
Takao Tanabe, Yellow Field, 1980, Collection of Glenbow.

In 1980, Tanabe decided to return to British Columbia. He purchased land on Vancouver Island and built a new home and studio, and he was deeply inspired by his surroundings. Discussing his interest in the coast, Tanabe notes, “The West Coast has its bright, clear days where all is revealed, but I favour the grey mists, the rain-obscured islands and the clouds that hide the details. However much we desire order and clarity in all the details of our lives, there are always unexpected events that could cloud and change our course. Life is ragged. The Coast is like that, just enough detail to make it interesting but not so clear as to be banal or overwhelming.”[5] His paintings of the coast quickly became iconic. He also created a series of prints, often working in collaboration with the virtuoso printmaker Masato Arikushi. The two men met in 1981, and Arikushi’s outstanding talents in woodcut led to a rare partnership in which Arikushi translated Tanabe’s paintings to create prints such as Nootka Afternoon, 1993.

As a leader in art in Canada, Tanabe has had a profound impact. He advocated for the establishment of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, created two prizes to support emerging artists, and has contributed to multiple arts scholarships. His achievements have been recognized with numerous honours, most notably a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2003 and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2013. Describing his stature, curator Ian M. Thom has said Tanabe’s “visual legacy is both profound and deep. He tells us much about our world that we might otherwise miss. We are all in his debt for his exceptional enhancement of our visual culture.”[6]

Today, Glenbow is honoured that 55 works by Tanabe are in the museum’s collection. We look forward to sharing his exceptional legacy with visitors for many years to come.

References

[1] Carol Hogg, “Takao Tanabe’s solo show at Glenbow splendid and long overdue,” Calgary Herald, February 4, 1977.

[2] Joseph Plaskett in Takao Tanabe: A Work of Art (Prometheus Films, 2009), quoted in Ian M. Thom, Takao Tanabe: Life & Work (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023), https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/takao-tanabe/biography/.

[3] Roald Nasgaard, “Adventures in Abstraction, Or, ‘Perhaps I Was Always a Landscape Painter,” in Takao Tanabe (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005), 50.

[4] Denise Leclerc, “Inscape or Landscape: An Unfinished Business,” in Chronicles of Form and Place: Works on Paper by Takao Tanabe (Burnaby: Burnaby Art Gallery, 2012), 26.

[5] Ian Thom, “Takao Tanabe: An Artist’s Life,” in Takao Tanabe (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005), 20.

[6] Ian M. Thom, “Takao Tanabe as a Printmaker,” in Takao Tanabe: Printmaker (Kelowna: Kelowna Art Gallery, 2023), 21.

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