Léonard Foujita
CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ - WORKS EXPERTISE
“Only the power of art can overcome the barrier of nations and the difference of races in the world. Only it can penetrate the human heart.”
Foujita in “Nager sur la terre”, Tokyo 1942
I lived in Tokyo until I was 27, then I lived in Paris for 20 years. I was raised in Japan, but my painting grew in France. I have family in Japan and friends in France. Now, I have two homelands; I am an international person. I feel nostalgia for two countries.
FOUJITA
From his earliest childhood, Foujita dedicated his life to creation.
He made his own toys from whatever he could find, his saber from the bamboo in the family garden as an adolescent.
He painted in oil from the age of 13 with his father’s help and consent.
He drew and painted postcards for friends. Artistic practice consumed him throughout middle and high school, leading to his selection for exhibition in Paris at the Universal Exhibition.
At the Beaux-Arts, he learned to master the fundamentals of traditional and Western painting techniques and also to venture into original subjects.
His country, however, remained too conservative for his taste; it was in France, whose language he studied from high school, that he would settle and realize his dream: to become a great Japanese painter in Paris.
All facets of his work express the same thirst for transcendence, knowledge, and recognition throughout his long career, led between Paris, his travels, a return to Japan, and then definitively back to Paris.
His art, oscillating between two cultures, the West and the East, and his erudition allowing him to draw from other cultural sources, led him to create a unique style, recognizable by its meticulous technique and drawing deeply rooted in figuration.
Foujita attached great importance to the techniques of drawing, painting, and engraving.
Scientific advancements now make it possible to document each domain in every period through analyses that distinguish true from false – copies and counterfeits being legion worldwide.
CATALOGUE AND EXPERTISE
The Catalogue Raisonné is the culmination of over 40 years of research dedicated to cataloging, describing, and chronologically classifying the works of this artist.
Its purpose is to identify and publicize the authentic works of the great painter Foujita. Concurrently, through this inventory of his creations, it aims to eliminate fakes and forgeries produced across all eras up to the present day.
It also aims, through experience, referring to our archives and those consulted elsewhere, to clarify the constants of this artist’s work and note its exceptions, in order to promote his Work to the widest possible audience in all the countries of this world, which he was proud to have circled four times.
The archiving carried out by Sylvie Buisson with Dominique Buisson until 1990, and Casimir Buisson since 2007, leads today, and increasingly each day, to the detailed illumination of the creation of a particularly prolific artist.
His experimental and unique dimension also requires in-depth knowledge, down to the smallest details, of his particular life moments, his friendships, his loves, and the difficulties he faced throughout his history in France, Japan, Europe, and the rest of the world.
Indeed, this traveling artist can surprise with the renewal of his thought and the means he employs to express himself and translate into varied forms and colors, according to his periods and subjects addressed.
It is considered that, much like his native country which remains very mysterious to foreigners, if you think you have fully understood it, it then eludes you and forces you to question yourself.
Sylvie Buisson
Catalogue Raisonné
Editor and archivist of the General Catalogue Raisonné of Léonard Foujita's Work since 1980
Accredited Expertise
International Expert on the Life and Work of Léonard Foujita with the Union Française des Experts en objets d'art since 1989.
UFE
President of the UFE - Union Française des Experts en objets d'art since 2018
www.ufe-experts.fr
CEDEA
Vice-President of CEDEA - Compagnie Européenne des Experts d'Art since 2023
www.cedea.fr
Casimir Buisson
Catalogue Raisonné
Editor and archivist of the General Catalogue Raisonné of Léonard Foujita's Work since 2010
Accredited Expertise
Expert on the Life and Work of Léonard Foujita since 2020 - Specialist in pictorial layers and painted supports.
Our research work has been consistent for 40 years. Beyond cataloging the Work, we endeavor to elucidate its consistencies and its anomalies, aiming to bring Foujita's art to the broadest possible audience.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions dedicated to Léonard Foujita with the collaboration of Sylvie Buisson, curator, and her archives.
Les 7 Passions de Foujita
Itinérante - Japon
Lire les détails de l'expo
Foujita – Peindre dans les Années Folles
Musée Maillol - Paris
Lire les détails de l'expo
Léonard Foujita et ses modèles
Itinérante - Japon
Lire les détails de l'expo
News
- Art Market, Events, History, News
The Château-Musée de Cagnes, represented by its director Emeric Pinkowicz,
- France-Culture 2018 / culture broadcast
History of Japan – France-Culture Episode 2/4: Foujita, the most
- ACRB 2024, History, News
1957, Foujita, Anouk Aimée, Gérard Philippe during filming. Chana Orloff