Takao Tanabe: Seven Decades of Painting

×

Expand

Takao Tanabe, "Flags," 1962

oil & lucite on canvas, 60" x 26"

Madrona Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of 20 paintings by Takao Tanabe. 

Acquired over the last eight years, this exhibition provides a cross section of Tanabe's career and features work from every decade that he has been active as an artist. 

Based in Vancouver in the 1950's, Tanabe was a central figure in the Lyrical Abstraction movement along with B.C. Binning, Jack Shadbolt, Gordon Smith, Toni Onley, and Donald Jarvis. This era led to Tanabe's first major solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery and helped establish him as a nationally recognized artist. This was a time of artistic development for the artist with opportunities to study in New York, London, and Japan, all of which greatly influenced his career over the following decades. The works in this exhibition follow Tanabe's career from the Lyrical Abstraction works of the 1950's, his hard-edge abstraction works of the 1960's, to his groundbreaking Land Series paintings from the 1970's and onwards. His time spent as the Director of Painting at the Banff Centre for the Arts from 1973 until 1980 would have a profound impact on his work and would help cement Tanabe's reputation as a leader in the Canadian arts scene.

Madrona Gallery is honoured to offer work of this calibre by such an important Canadian artist who greatly contributed to Canadian art.