The Special Exhibition of Tatsuo Takayama will display 30-odd works spanning from 1946 to 2001. They represent the artist's distinctive oriental style. "Bathroom", "Food", "Peony",and the "Selection of Tang Dynasty Poems" gives an insight into the Japanese mind.
Shang Hui, a fine arts critic, said:"Takayama is a master of Japanese painting. His works display a kind of elegant beauty, mixed with a distinctive melancholy deeply rooted in the Japanese culture. To us, Takayama represents the Japanese ethnic culture, but he was also influenced by Chinese traditional painting skills and western oil painting coloration."
Takayama was trained in Japanese-style painting, known as Nihonga. By simplifying the forms of his subjects and using flat colors, he established an individualistic style, characterized by his usage of unusual coloration in landscapes and figures.
Takayama was from the beginning a central figure in the official Nitten -Japan art exhibition. In the 1960s, he produced a group of profound, spiritual paintings including Night and North Country, which questioned the nature of human existence. For these he was acknowledged as an important representative figure of modern Nihonga.
(CCTV.com September 25, 2003)
