Tomie Ohtake

Tomie Ohtake was a Japanese Brazilian visual artist renowned for her paintings, prints, and sculptures. She was a prominent figure in the Brazilian informal abstractionism movement.

Biography of Tomie Ohtake

Tomie Ohtake was born in 1913 in Kyoto, Japan. At the age of twenty-three in 1936, Ohtake traveled to Brazil to visit a brother but was unable to return to Japan due to the ongoing Pacific Theater of World War II. Consequently, she settled in São Paulo, where she later married agronomist Ushio Ohtake.

After many years devoted to her family and household, Ohtake attended an exhibition by artist Keya Sugano at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. Inspired, she began creating genre and landscape paintings under his guidance. Her career as an artist began when she joined the Seibi group, a collective of artists of Japanese descent.

Early in her career, Ohtake transitioned to figurative painting. In the late 1950s, after moving beyond an initial phase of figurative studies, she immersed herself in abstract explorations. During this time, she created the "Blind Paintings" series, blindfolding herself in experiments that challenged the foundational ideas of the Brazilian Neo-concrete movement and brought sensibility and intuition to the forefront of her practice.

In 1957, at the invitation of critic Mário Pedrosa, Ohtake held her first solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo. This was followed by her participation in the São Paulo Biennial in 1961.

Later, expanding her oeuvre to include printmaking and sculpture, Ohtake participated in the Prints section of the Venice Biennale in 1972 as part of the Seibi Group. In 1978, she also exhibited at the Tokyo Biennale. During the 1970s, Ohtake began experimenting with various printmaking techniques.

In 1988, the artist received the Order of Rio Branco for her public sculpture commemorating the 80th anniversary of Japanese immigration in São Paulo. 

Starting in the late 1980s, she undertook large-scale sculptural projects and public works in São Paulo and neighboring cities.

The Instituto Tomie Ohtake, a non-profit museum showcasing her works along with local and international exhibitions of contemporary architecture and visual culture, opened in São Paulo in 2001. In 2006, she was honored with the Order of Cultural Merit.

In 2013, towards the end of her life, she embarked on a series of monochrome paintings, continuing this work until her passing. Tomie Ohtake passed away in 2015, at the age of 101, due to pneumonia.