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Lot Essay
When Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita arrived in Paris from Tokyo in 1913, the city was poised to become the epicenter of a new aesthetic movement. By the time the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts opened in 1925—the event that would define Art Deco as a coherent style—Foujita had established himself as one of the most prominent artists in Montparnasse, integrating Japanese visual traditions with the geometric clarity and material consciousness that characterized the era's design principles. The Femmes portfolio, executed in 1930, represents Foujita's engagement with these concerns. Created five years after that exhibition, this deluxe edition demonstrates how the principles articulated in 1925 continued to shape artistic production throughout the decade, particularly in the realm of the luxury édition de tête, where the boundaries between fine art and decorative object were deliberately collapsed.
Foujita's life in Paris placed him at an intersection of avant-garde art and decorative modernism. Settling in Montparnasse, he became a member of the École de Paris, forming relationships with Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and other artists who congregated at the cafés Le Dôme and La Rotonde. His connection with Alice Prin, known as Kiki de Montparnasse—model, performer, and central figure in 1920s bohemian culture—situated him within the social networks where artistic innovation and cultural transformation converged. The photograph showing the artist with Kiki documents this milieu, where the visual arts, fashion, literature, and design existed in productive dialogue rather than separate spheres.
Foujita's aesthetic—characterized by his distinctive white grounds (achieved through a technique combining talc and other materials that he kept deliberately mysterious), delicate linear articulation, and synthesis of Japanese ink painting traditions with European printmaking methods—corresponded with Art Deco's engagement with non-Western artistic traditions. This was not the earlier generation's decorative japonisme but rather an investigation of how different visual systems might inform modern design. His work interested collectors and designers who understood technical mastery and cross-cultural synthesis as central to contemporary practice.
The artist's integration into Parisian design circles extended beyond aesthetic affinity. His studio attracted collectors and tastemakers who moved fluidly between fine art and decorative arts patronage. Jacques Doucet, the couturier who had transformed himself into one of the era's most discerning collectors, acquired Foujita's work alongside pieces by designers such as Eileen Gray and Pierre Legrain. This circulation pattern is significant: Foujita's ability to work across categories—producing paintings, illustrated books, and designs for applied arts—reflected the Art Deco ideal of the artist-designer whose practice was not constrained by traditional hierarchies.
The Femmes series demonstrates Foujita's command of printmaking technique while articulating a vision of feminine representation that resonated with contemporary design aesthetics. The combination of color etching, aquatint, and roulette allowed for tonal modulation and linear precision that paralleled developments in luxury crafts where technical innovation served refinement rather than industrial efficiency. The production specifications—Chine appliqué on Japon Impériale paper for the primary suite, Japon Ancien paper for the additional suite—indicate the period's attention to materials as carriers of cultural meaning and tactile quality. The deluxe edition structure, limited to six copies and augmented with an additional suite and original watercolor drawing, follows publishing models established by dealers such as Ambroise Vollard and reflects the Art Deco conviction that artistic experience could be calibrated through degrees of rarity and material elaboration.
The portfolio's subjects—women rendered with Foujita's characteristic balance of sensuality and formal restraint—engage with representations of modern femininity that circulated widely in 1920s visual culture. These figures inhabit a different social and visual space than their Belle Époque predecessors; they are the fashionable, mobile women who embodied the decade's transformed gender relations. Their elongated proportions and decorative settings invite comparison with contemporary design representations—the stylized figures that appeared in the work of designers such as Erté, or the attenuated forms in lacquer panels by Jean Dunand and metalwork by Armand-Albert Rateau. This formal consonance was not coincidental but rather reflected shared assumptions about how the modern body and modern space should be visualized.
Notably, two of the prints depict pairs of women together, their figures rendered with a subtle androgyny that suggests same-sex desire. This represented a significant departure from Western artistic convention, where the female nude had been predominantly configured for male viewing. The representation of women in intimate relationship with one another, rather than as objects arranged for heterosexual consumption, participated in the broader discourse of sexual liberation that characterized Montparnasse in the 1920s and early 1930s. This aspect of the portfolio may also reflect Foujita's knowledge of Japanese ukiyo-e traditions, particularly prints depicting the pleasure quarters of Edo, where representations of same-sex relationships and gender fluidity existed within established visual conventions. By bringing these representational strategies into conversation with European printmaking, Foujita created images that articulated the sexual and social freedoms that were integral to the cultural transformation occurring in interwar Paris.
By 1930, when Apollo Editions Artistiques published this portfolio, the principles articulated at the 1925 Exhibition had become integrated into Parisian visual production. Foujita's Femmes constitutes evidence of that integration—of how ideas about craft, modernism, and material quality that animated the exhibition continued to structure artistic practice in its aftermath. The portfolio format itself, with its emphasis on the complete ensemble rather than individual images, reflects the Art Deco insistence on totality, on the work of art as an element within a larger decorative program. This deluxe edition, number IV of six, represents a category of Art Deco production oriented toward connoisseurship, technical refinement, and the selective dissemination of objects within networks of patronage.
As the centennial of the 1925 Exhibition prompts reconsideration of the movement's scope and influence, Foujita's work offers a case study. His position as an artist from Tokyo who became a chronicler of Parisian modernity complicates narratives about Art Deco's relationship to non-Western cultures, while his movement between fine art and design contexts illuminates the period's challenge to established artistic categories. The Femmes portfolio demonstrates how these concerns manifested in specific objects—in choices about technique, materials, edition structure, and modes of distribution that together constituted a coherent aesthetic and social practice.
The dedication of this portfolio "à Monsieur André Kahn/En Souvenir" in 1930 exemplifies these collecting networks. André Kahn-Wolf (born circa 1880), active in Paris from at least the 1920s through the 1960s, assembled a collection that ranged from eighteenth-century portraits and Egyptian antiquities to German medieval sculpture and modern art. His patronage extended across historical periods and categories, much like the Art Deco approach to design, which drew inspiration from diverse sources while maintaining a coherent aesthetic vision. That his name appears in collecting contexts alongside the David-Weill family—one of France's most important collecting dynasties—indicates his standing within Parisian art circles. His donations to the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Strasbourg in 1966 and numerous gifts to the Louvre, including Egyptian works in 1972-1973, demonstrate a commitment to public institutions that was characteristic of this generation of collectors. For Foujita to dedicate one of only six deluxe copies to Kahn-Wolf suggests a relationship that went beyond simple patronage; the inscription "En Souvenir" implies personal connection, situating this portfolio within networks of friendship and mutual respect that linked artists, collectors, and designers in interwar Paris.
Foujita's life in Paris placed him at an intersection of avant-garde art and decorative modernism. Settling in Montparnasse, he became a member of the École de Paris, forming relationships with Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and other artists who congregated at the cafés Le Dôme and La Rotonde. His connection with Alice Prin, known as Kiki de Montparnasse—model, performer, and central figure in 1920s bohemian culture—situated him within the social networks where artistic innovation and cultural transformation converged. The photograph showing the artist with Kiki documents this milieu, where the visual arts, fashion, literature, and design existed in productive dialogue rather than separate spheres.
Foujita's aesthetic—characterized by his distinctive white grounds (achieved through a technique combining talc and other materials that he kept deliberately mysterious), delicate linear articulation, and synthesis of Japanese ink painting traditions with European printmaking methods—corresponded with Art Deco's engagement with non-Western artistic traditions. This was not the earlier generation's decorative japonisme but rather an investigation of how different visual systems might inform modern design. His work interested collectors and designers who understood technical mastery and cross-cultural synthesis as central to contemporary practice.
The artist's integration into Parisian design circles extended beyond aesthetic affinity. His studio attracted collectors and tastemakers who moved fluidly between fine art and decorative arts patronage. Jacques Doucet, the couturier who had transformed himself into one of the era's most discerning collectors, acquired Foujita's work alongside pieces by designers such as Eileen Gray and Pierre Legrain. This circulation pattern is significant: Foujita's ability to work across categories—producing paintings, illustrated books, and designs for applied arts—reflected the Art Deco ideal of the artist-designer whose practice was not constrained by traditional hierarchies.
The Femmes series demonstrates Foujita's command of printmaking technique while articulating a vision of feminine representation that resonated with contemporary design aesthetics. The combination of color etching, aquatint, and roulette allowed for tonal modulation and linear precision that paralleled developments in luxury crafts where technical innovation served refinement rather than industrial efficiency. The production specifications—Chine appliqué on Japon Impériale paper for the primary suite, Japon Ancien paper for the additional suite—indicate the period's attention to materials as carriers of cultural meaning and tactile quality. The deluxe edition structure, limited to six copies and augmented with an additional suite and original watercolor drawing, follows publishing models established by dealers such as Ambroise Vollard and reflects the Art Deco conviction that artistic experience could be calibrated through degrees of rarity and material elaboration.
The portfolio's subjects—women rendered with Foujita's characteristic balance of sensuality and formal restraint—engage with representations of modern femininity that circulated widely in 1920s visual culture. These figures inhabit a different social and visual space than their Belle Époque predecessors; they are the fashionable, mobile women who embodied the decade's transformed gender relations. Their elongated proportions and decorative settings invite comparison with contemporary design representations—the stylized figures that appeared in the work of designers such as Erté, or the attenuated forms in lacquer panels by Jean Dunand and metalwork by Armand-Albert Rateau. This formal consonance was not coincidental but rather reflected shared assumptions about how the modern body and modern space should be visualized.
Notably, two of the prints depict pairs of women together, their figures rendered with a subtle androgyny that suggests same-sex desire. This represented a significant departure from Western artistic convention, where the female nude had been predominantly configured for male viewing. The representation of women in intimate relationship with one another, rather than as objects arranged for heterosexual consumption, participated in the broader discourse of sexual liberation that characterized Montparnasse in the 1920s and early 1930s. This aspect of the portfolio may also reflect Foujita's knowledge of Japanese ukiyo-e traditions, particularly prints depicting the pleasure quarters of Edo, where representations of same-sex relationships and gender fluidity existed within established visual conventions. By bringing these representational strategies into conversation with European printmaking, Foujita created images that articulated the sexual and social freedoms that were integral to the cultural transformation occurring in interwar Paris.
By 1930, when Apollo Editions Artistiques published this portfolio, the principles articulated at the 1925 Exhibition had become integrated into Parisian visual production. Foujita's Femmes constitutes evidence of that integration—of how ideas about craft, modernism, and material quality that animated the exhibition continued to structure artistic practice in its aftermath. The portfolio format itself, with its emphasis on the complete ensemble rather than individual images, reflects the Art Deco insistence on totality, on the work of art as an element within a larger decorative program. This deluxe edition, number IV of six, represents a category of Art Deco production oriented toward connoisseurship, technical refinement, and the selective dissemination of objects within networks of patronage.
As the centennial of the 1925 Exhibition prompts reconsideration of the movement's scope and influence, Foujita's work offers a case study. His position as an artist from Tokyo who became a chronicler of Parisian modernity complicates narratives about Art Deco's relationship to non-Western cultures, while his movement between fine art and design contexts illuminates the period's challenge to established artistic categories. The Femmes portfolio demonstrates how these concerns manifested in specific objects—in choices about technique, materials, edition structure, and modes of distribution that together constituted a coherent aesthetic and social practice.
The dedication of this portfolio "à Monsieur André Kahn/En Souvenir" in 1930 exemplifies these collecting networks. André Kahn-Wolf (born circa 1880), active in Paris from at least the 1920s through the 1960s, assembled a collection that ranged from eighteenth-century portraits and Egyptian antiquities to German medieval sculpture and modern art. His patronage extended across historical periods and categories, much like the Art Deco approach to design, which drew inspiration from diverse sources while maintaining a coherent aesthetic vision. That his name appears in collecting contexts alongside the David-Weill family—one of France's most important collecting dynasties—indicates his standing within Parisian art circles. His donations to the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Strasbourg in 1966 and numerous gifts to the Louvre, including Egyptian works in 1972-1973, demonstrate a commitment to public institutions that was characteristic of this generation of collectors. For Foujita to dedicate one of only six deluxe copies to Kahn-Wolf suggests a relationship that went beyond simple patronage; the inscription "En Souvenir" implies personal connection, situating this portfolio within networks of friendship and mutual respect that linked artists, collectors, and designers in interwar Paris.