Ryuji Tanaka

The Life and Work of Ryuji Tanaka

Using traditional mineral pigments—a classic type of Japanese paint—Ryuji Tanaka’s works convey a keen awareness of nature. Tanaka’s life was marked by a constant and deep curiosity in a variety of genres, as well as his continual efforts to participate in competitive exhibitions. In this essay, I would like to provide more insight into Ryuji Tanaka by tracing the paths he pursued.

Ryuji Tanaka was born on November 29, 1927, as the son of Shokichi Tanaka and his wife Toyono, in the Japanese city of Higashi Futami, Futami-cho, Kako-gun in Hyogo Prefecture, which is now part of Akashi City. His given name was Susumu.^[1]

A small village located on the eastern part of the Seto Island Sea, Futami thrived as a cargo port in the mid 19^th century. Although Tanaka was part of a generation that received mandatory military training, World War II ended before he was drafted. He graduated from Konohana Commercial Junior High School in Osaka, and went on to study nihon-ga—Japanese style painting—at the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting, now known as the Kyoto City University of Arts. Based on period photographs, Tanaka’s works from this time deviated from traditional nihon-ga composition, displaying a bold quality that presaged his later style.

When he graduated in 1948, Tanaka joined a number of friends who had also majored in nihon-ga and together they founded an avant-garde art group called Pan-Real^[2]. The group formed as an attempt to revolutionize the conservative world of Japanese-style painting. The following year, Pan-Real made a new start as a group that was restricted solely to nihon-ga painters.^[3] It was an era of new movements in which young artists associated with many different genres searched for freer structures and new forms of expression. However, perhaps due to differences of opinion, Tanaka parted ways with Pan-Real three years later.

Upon completing a post-graduate course in 1952, like many other artists of that era he found work as a teacher. Tanaka joined the art faculty at a junior high school in Kobe and then found a job at Motoyama Junior High School. In 1955, after passionately courting Shoko Saitou—a music teacher at the same school—the two were married. The family soon welcomed two daughters.

In the 1960s, Tanaka entered a highly productive period in his art. Subsequently, he submitted paintings to various group shows and displayed his work in the Shin-Bijutsu Kyokai (New Art Association) exhibition, which focused primarily on nihon-ga.

Tanaka’s graduation from the Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting coincidentally coincided with that of Kazuo Shiraga. Although Shiraga was three years older, he’d been drafted and had also taken a one-year leave from the school after the war was over. Thus, the two men ended up in the same graduating class.

Tanaka seems to have been closer to Shiraga than any of his other painter friends. The older man influenced him and guided him in various ways. Shiraga also studied nihon-ga, but he switched to oil painting after graduation.

Tanaka, on the other hand, made use of the special characteristics of nihon-ga pigments to develop a new method of painting. Tanaka held his first solo show in Kobe in 1960. In 1962, he was awarded the Nihon-ga Contest Prize in the 5^th Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition. That year marked the introduction of the contest division and Tanaka was rewarded for his bold efforts.

In April 1963, he held a solo exhibition at Takekawa Gallery in Tokyo, which included a total of 25 works. Tanaka continued to pursue the style he developed during this period for the rest of his life.

His materials were mineral pigments, which he applied to Japanese paper known as washi—the canvas support medium. In standard nihon-ga, glue is mixed with the pigment to act as a fixing agent and the paint is applied with a brush. Though the powdery texture was different, Tanaka added pebbles to expand the pigments and also used adhesive. Rather than a brush, he used a feather, making the paint stream, thus blurring the picture. Apparently, this act was inspired by bonseki, a traditional form of interior decoration.^[4]

In later years, Tanaka added glass powder to the pigments to create the effect of a white blur. Oil painting lacked the rough quality of nihon-ga, and while he did make some figurative nihon-ga paintings before the war, Tanaka became known for his non-figurative work.

The year 1963 marked a major turning point in Tanaka’s career. He left his job as a public school teacher and moved to a private junior high that was affiliated with a local high school. This move afforded him more free time and led to an even closer relationship with Shiraga, whom Tanaka asked to help instruct the school’s art club students every year. It was likely also in 1963—with Shiraga’s invitation—that Tanaka began participating in the group’s meetings and making frequent visits to the Gutai Pinacotheca. Eventually, in October 1965, Tanaka became a member of the Gutai Art Association. In essence, this meant that the group’s co-founder, Jiro Yoshihara, had recognized him.

At the same time, he became a member of the Ashiya City Art Association and served as a judge for the Ashiya City and Dobiten exhibitions.^[5] However, after showing his work in the 19^th Gutai Exhibition two years later, Tanaka left the group. Similar to his break with Pan-Real, the reasons are unclear, but one might imagine that it had something to do with his personality. His notebooks contain only a single reference to this event: “I’m feeling doubts and would like to put feeling in order.”^[6] Tanaka’s style remained unchanged and he continued to show his work in Shin-Bijutsu Kyokai exhibitions, as well as frequently holding solo shows in the Kobe area.

In about 1975, Tanaka developed an interest in haiku and studied the poetic form with the director of a haiku group called Hototogisu^[7], with whom he was a fellow teacher. His interests continued to expand, inspiring him to get a boat license, learn about antiques and watch many movies.

He was also interested in Saburo Hasegawa,^[8] a graduate of the school where Tanaka was teaching at the time. He began studying the artist’s work and reading about him. While Tanaka believed that in Hasegawa’s work there was a struggle between natural versus human power and an attempt to capture the “soft and hard aspects within nature”, Hasegawa set out to express what he called controlled accidents. Tanaka’s research resulted in several privately published volumes, such as Research Notes on Saburo Hasegawa: The Man and His Art.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Tanaka devoted himself to making a contribution to the local community. In addition to holding his solo shows and actively submitting his work to competitive exhibitions, he taught (primarily nihon-ga) at museums and study centres to older painting enthusiasts. He was a generous teacher who also provided his students with a place to show their work. He continued his educational work until just before his death.

In the 1960s, Tanaka’s works combined the intensity and delicacy of various hues of black. In the 1980s and 1990s, they took on a brighter and airy quality through his use of many colours. As Tanaka constantly confronted natural power, he seems to have locked horns with human (or his own) power and attempted to express beauty through his work while grappling with nature.

Coinciding with Ryuji Tanaka’s inaugural exhibition in Antwerp, independent curator, historian and Gutai scholar Koichi Kawasaki contributed this text for the gallery’s monograph documenting the artist’s life and work, published in collaboration with AsaMer, 2016. Translated from Japanese by Christopher Stephens.

[1] Around 1956, the artist changed his name to Ryuji, which consists of two kanji characters; the first character means “dragon” and the second character means “child”.

[2] A group of eight artists formed Pan-Real in March 1948: Takashi Yamasaki, Makoto Mikami, Seikichi Aoyama, Kazuo Yagi, Osamu Suzuki, Shingo Hoshino, Shigeya Fudo and Ryuji Tanaka.

[3] Yagi and Suzuki were the only ceramic artists among the founding members and they left Pan-Real after forming the Sodeisha group.

[4] Bonseki is a kind of traditional Japanese art form in which a natural scene is reproduced with stones on a black tray that’s displayed on the floor. Using feathers and white sand, the works convey various aspects of nature.

[5] The Ashiya Art Exhibition was a competitive event in which Jiro Yoshihara served as a judge. Beginning in the last 1950s, it became a gateway for artists who hoped to join Gutai. The Dobiten was an exhibition of paintings and sculptural works by preschool-age children that was judged by Gutai members. The participants attended kindergarten schools throughout the Kansai region that appreciated the concept of the art of children. The last edition of the exhibition was held in 2004.

[6] This quote is an excerpt from a notebook that Tanaka also used as a scheduling book.

[7] Hototogisu is a haiku group that preceded a magazine of the same name. It was launched in 1897. Members at the time included Shiki Masaoka and Kyoshi Takahama. Haiku lovers all over Japan continue to take part in the group today.

[8] Saburo Hasegawa (1906-1957) was a graduate of Konan High School, where Tanaka worked. He was a painter and critic who introduced European modern art to Japan. After the war, he became friends with Isamu Noguchi and explored Western and Eastern thought in addition to traditional arts and their contemporary qualities.