Woman with a Hen 女と鶏

WAKITA Kazu 脇田　和

Wakita, who studied drawing for four years in Germany, originally produced strictly realistic works. But after the war, he came to attach equal importance to both "representation" (figurative work) and "creation" (abstract work), and continued producing while shifting his focus between the two. Around 1955, in addition to concentrating on "creation," he started to place a stylized bird at the center of his pictures to give them a distinct tone of his own. The bird often appears in Wakita's works accompanying human figures, and children in particular. It was, to him, both "a lovely subject matter" and "a stubborn material" with which it was not easy to get the desired effect. The artist faced this particular motif patiently and turned it into a vehicle of rich emotions. In this work, the solid form of the female figure and the bird stand out with the vertical and horizontal black lines against the overall texture of thin layers of paint in delicate colours. In these elements, we can sense the artist's strength to keep his aloofness while using soft and sweet motifs and his determination to make new creations that defy existing forms.

Collection of: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Title: Woman with a Hen
Artist Name: WAKITA Kazu
Year: 1959
Category: Painting&Print
Material / Technique: Oil on canvas
Acquisition date: 1989
Accession number: 1989-00-0049-000
MOT Collection Search: https://mot-collection-search.jp/shiryo/3265/

Metadata

Other items of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (8084)

Woman in Kimono [verso: Woman of Ginza]

IKEBE Hitoshi

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

作品画像：（左）山の向こうの中腹のちっぽけな村はすでに見えなくなり、ふたたび春が巡ってきた。葡萄の木はあたかも塀の笠石の下を匍う病める大蛇のように見える。生あたたかい空気のなかを褐色の光が動きまわっていた。似たりよったりの毎日が作りだす空白は伐り残した若木まで切り倒すだろう。日々の暮らしのなかで樹木の茂みは岩のように突き出ている。（右）自分の暮らした村がこんなに小さく思われたことはない。太陽が姿をみせた。背の高いポプラの林は風に吹き動かされる砂浜のような格好をしている。切れ目のないその連続を見ているだけで眼がくらんでくる。変り映えしない日々の連続に酔うことができたなら象や蛇をしとめた気にもなれる。蝶が舞うようにそんな風に彼はものを識ったのである。

(Left) The little village on the far mountainside was already out of sight, and spring was coming around again. The grape trees were like large ailing snakes creeping under the coping stones of the wall. A brown light moved about in the tepid air. The void created by the selfsame every day is likely to chop down even the young trees that were left behind. In this everyday life, a thicket of trees protrudes like a boulder. (Right) The village I lived in has never been thought of as so small. The sun showed itself. The tall poplar forest looks like a beach being blown about by the wind. I grow dizzy just watching that seamless succession. If I can manage to get drunk on this succession of unchanging days, I can also grow to feel like I have taken down an elephant or snake. He differentiated things in this way, like a fluttering butterfly.

OKAZAKI Kenjiro

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo