Lot 1521: TIGER TATEISHI

TIGER TATEISHI
(1941-1998)
Planet Blossoms
signed 'Tiger' in English; dated '69' (lower right); signed and inscribed 'Tiger Tateishi (Milan)' in English; dated '1969' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
163 x 118.5 cm. (64 1/8 x 46 5/8in.)
Painted in 1969

Tagawa, Japan, Tagawa Museum of Art, The Endless Tiger, 8 April-9 May, 1999.

Tagawa Museum of Art, The Endless Tiger, Tagawa, Japan, 1999 (illustrated, p. 15).

Tiger Tateishi's career as a painter began in early on, when his commercial work as a comic artist was deeply engrained in his mind even after he left for Italy, the home of glorious religious art. Planet Blossoms (Lot 1521) is the first painting by Tateishi's painted during his stay in Italy, where he worked as a designer for Olivetti typewriters in Italy and began a journey of self discovery. The subject demonstrates his longstanding link with manga and the practices of rational spacing, storytelling, as well as, personal love of the planets. From the top left frame and in sequential order from left to right, top to bottom, we gravitate towards the moon-like planet as it too, pulls itself towards its surrounding stars. In its initial pale stage it begins to transform, deepening in colour as it is swallowed, before it reappears and eventually is reincarnated into a blossoming flower. The contrasting deep red and pale pink evokes a fleshy environment for the seemingly reproductive process of biology or the brilliant stars of our solar system, processes of which are equally mystical but magnificent, a phenomenon of nature. Intertwining stars and flora, primordial symbols of rebirth reveal Tateishi's acknowledgement of his personal creative reinvention in Italy, further established by the lack of heavy surrealist and traditional Japanese motifs found in his late works. Planet Blossoms shows the fundamental, alternate dimension to Tateishi's oeuvres, gently hinting at his future artistic developments as it possesses the same electric sense of colour and ultramodern vision of our world. Tiger Tateishi today remains one of the prominent Japanese artists whose futuristic and inspired vision holds a pervasive and conscious influence over the younger generation and contemporary Japanese artists.