NYAB Event - Hiroaki Tatei "Last Samurai"

Hiroaki Tatei "Last Samurai"

Onishi Gallery

This event has ended.

Onishi Gallery presents "Last Samurai", a solo exhibition of Hiroaki Tatei (1937-1995), an artist who was from Fukushima Prefecture. It was Hiroaki Tatei’s dream to have a show in the United States. The support of the Daishichi Sake Brewery, Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima Television Broadcasting Company, and Music From Japan have now made it possible.

Born in what is now South Korea, Hiroaki Tatei was a singular and highly individualistic painter who never swerved from his desire to create and show his work on his own terms. Tatei moved with his family to Japan in 1945 and later graduated from the Musashino Art School. He has exhibited widely. His painting, which moved through many artistic stages, boasts bright and startling color and distortion, and at times includes masks from the Japanese Noh Theater and Chinese Peking Opera. In addition, Tatei was inspired by the plastic arts of Mexico and the Mayan and Aztec civilizations and this influence shaped part of his career, as did his travels throughout the United States and Europe.

In his work, Hiroaki Tatei explored the shadow side of the human soul and the intensity of human existence. He was deeply concerned with the dualism of light and dark in humanity, and his work expresses the disparity between inner and outer appearances. Tatei’s fiercely independent life and artistic legacy influenced, and continue to influence, many artists. As Kyo Ito, Head Curator of the Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art has written, “Hiroaki Tatei can be said to be the ‘Last Samurai’ of Japanese art.”

[Image: Hiroaki Tatei "Face of a Man" oil on canvas (1962) 47 x 30 in.]