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Lot Essay
In Foujita's Deux Amies of 1929, two elegant, muscular nude models—one blonde, one brunette—sit together, totally unselfconscious in their mutual nudity. They both adopt a casual, posture, embracing one another with one hand draped gently over the other's shoulder. Though they do not make eye contact with one another, the women both gaze pointedly towards something or someone beyond the margin of the canvas. Unlike other modern artists who used the female nude merely as a vehicle for stylistic experimentation, Foujita invested his subjects with real, complex emotional intimacy; in the words of one art historian, "Foujita maintains the conventions of classical perspective to stress the tenderness of a discreet moment shared by two naked women seated quietly together" (P.J. Burnhaum, Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities, New York, 2016, p. 81). Furthermore, unlike many of his contemporaries, Foujita rejected geometric flatness and bright, bold color in favor of a truly three-dimensional, elegant monochromatic composition, inspired by his academic training.
Foujita, who trained at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music but spent the vast majority of his career in Paris beginning in 1913, fused European and Japanese painting techniques. Works like Deux Amies can be characterized as true cultural hybrids, combining media in unexpected ways, yielding totally unique results. Here, as in many of his paintings from this period, artist applied layers of oil paint to a canvas produce a creamy white background for pale white flesh (which he referred to as "nyuhakushoku" or “whiteness of milk”). Over this, he applied traditional Japanese ink known as "sumi" with an extremely delicate brush or pen in order to incise the outlines of the figures and to create the shadows that define their skeletal and muscular structures. The resulting work is remarkable for its luminous surface, precise draftsmanship and stylized anatomies.
Foujita was particularly drawn to the subject of the female nude, while ubiquitous in French museums is relatively rare in Japanese fine art. As the artist himself observed, "There are only very few nudes in Japanese paintings. Even painters like Harunobo or Utamaro let only appear a portion of the knee or the leg, and these were the restricted area where they could represent the skin sensation. This is what encouraged me to paint nudes again after eight years of break with the clear objective of depicting the most beautiful material that can be: human’s skin" (quoted in S. And D. Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita, Paris, 2001, vol. 1, p. 96.)
Foujita, who trained at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music but spent the vast majority of his career in Paris beginning in 1913, fused European and Japanese painting techniques. Works like Deux Amies can be characterized as true cultural hybrids, combining media in unexpected ways, yielding totally unique results. Here, as in many of his paintings from this period, artist applied layers of oil paint to a canvas produce a creamy white background for pale white flesh (which he referred to as "nyuhakushoku" or “whiteness of milk”). Over this, he applied traditional Japanese ink known as "sumi" with an extremely delicate brush or pen in order to incise the outlines of the figures and to create the shadows that define their skeletal and muscular structures. The resulting work is remarkable for its luminous surface, precise draftsmanship and stylized anatomies.
Foujita was particularly drawn to the subject of the female nude, while ubiquitous in French museums is relatively rare in Japanese fine art. As the artist himself observed, "There are only very few nudes in Japanese paintings. Even painters like Harunobo or Utamaro let only appear a portion of the knee or the leg, and these were the restricted area where they could represent the skin sensation. This is what encouraged me to paint nudes again after eight years of break with the clear objective of depicting the most beautiful material that can be: human’s skin" (quoted in S. And D. Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita, Paris, 2001, vol. 1, p. 96.)