About Toshiko Takaezu (1922 - 2011)

Toshiko Takaezu was born in 1922 in Hawaii to Japanese émigré parents, the sixth of eleven children, and grew up in a very traditional Japanese household. Her first introduction to the clay medium was in 1940 when she worked in a commercial ceramics factory during the war and where she obtained a technical facility churning out multiple pieces such as ashtrays and other functional pieces in press molds.  

 

Takaezu then went on to study painting at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and later enrolled at the University of Hawaii to study ceramics under Claude Horan, cementing her interest in the medium. Continuing her studies, Takaezu enrolled in the Cranbrook Academy of Art where she studied weaving and ceramics under the highly rigorous Maija Grotell who would make a lasting impression on Takaezu, instilling in her the importance of individuality in her work, discipline and a hard work ethic, something that Takaezu would instill in her own students for many years after.

 

Although Takaezu would spend the next five decades making paintings, weavings and ceramic sculptures, it is her “closed-form” ceramic sculptures that marry painterly glazes on a three-dimensional form for which she is best known. Oftentimes, her smaller scaled closed form sculptures incorporated a hidden rattle inside, thus bringing dimension to her work. With her formative training occurring during the 1950’s with the pervasive influence of the Abstract Expressionist movement at that time, Takaezu’s ceramic sculptures were often painted in a very gestural manner, much like the paintings of Joan Mitchell, Franz Kline or Jackson Pollock, and at other times employing more subtle color variations and harmonies like the work of Mark Rothko. It is the marriage of painting and three-dimensional form that sets Takaezu’s work apart and is considered her hallmark.

 

Takaezu continued to teach for many years at prestigious institutions such as The Cranbrook Academy of Art, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Cleveland Institute of Art and Princeton University. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout her career and is included in many private and public collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, The DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, The Los Angeles County museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others.