This year, 2013, Tomie Ohtake celebtrates her 100th birthday, and will be the recipient of a number of tributes for the date and the importance of her oeuvre.
The institute that carries her name, established in 2001, has prepared three exhibitions to be held during the course of the year. In May, the artist was the subject of a special tribute by the Brazilian Art Critics Association during its Annual Awards Ceremony, which recognizes artists, personalities, critics, media that divulges the visual arts, specialized publications, and institutions. Ohtake was present for the celebration.
Tomie Ohtake was born in Kyoto, Japan, on November 21, 1913. She arrived in Brazil at the age of 21, intending to spend some time in the country. The imminence of WWII resulted in her staying for good. She got married and had two children, and later she became a naturalized Brazilian citizen.
Her career as an artist began at the age of 37. She was a member of the Seibi group, one of the significant visual-artists groups formed in the mid-1930s. Seibi brought together Japanese artists and artists of Japanese descent, and had as one of its goals the presentation of group exhibitions. It was with this group that Ohtake exhibited her work for the first time. Her art garnered recognition, receiving many awards and distinctions over the years, and was always noted by critics.
Later, Ohtake embarked on an exploration of abstraction, and in 1957 presented her first solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo. Over the course of her career, she had innumerable solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows, both in Brazil and abroad. The Museu de Arte de São Paulo, another important institution in the city, organized a Tomie Ohtake retrospective in 1983, and the 1966 São Paulo Biennial featured a special room devoted to her work.
Tomie Ohtake is unanimously considered one of Brazil's most significant art-world figures. She has left an important mark in the history of Brazilian art as one of the main representatives of informalist abstraction as it evolved in the country and for permanent innovation and exploration. Her work is part of public and private collections, and includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, and urban-space works. Ohtake is well known for her works installed at various points throughout São Paulo.
The celebration of her anniversary began last February, with the first show prepared by the Tomie Ohtake Institute. This show was curated by Agnaldo Farias and Paulo Miyada, and it established relationships of approximation and contrast within her oeuvre, between 1956 through 2013, and the work of colleagues from different generations, her contemporaries, all active during that period: Mira Schendel, Hércules Barsotti, Lia Chaia, Camila Sposati, Cildo Meireles, and Nuno Ramos, among others. The curator's perspective was to note intersections with these artists in terms of color, gesture, and texture, elements that are essential in Ohtake's work.
Ohtake continues to work daily, investigating and innovating. She remains a weighty presence in the Brazilian cultural scene.
NOTE
(1) Lisbeth Rebollo Gonçalves teaches at the University of São Paulo. She is the president of the Brazilian Art Critics Association and vice president o of the International Art Critics Association.