Tomie Ohtake arrived in São Paulo from Kyoto in 1936, during a third major phase of Japanese migration to Brazil. Intentionally cultivating the image of a withdrawn persona, Ohtake left all her works untitled and shied away from offering any interpretation in public or private. From her technique and preparation, however, we can learn much about her creative process. This untitled abstraction from 1978, for example, is emblematic of a turning point within her production, traceable to the early 1970s, when she moved away from an expressionist style into hard-edged, graphic, and optical compositions. At this time, Ohtake experimented with silkscreen and used magazine cut-outs and other ephemera to make preparatory collage studies for her canvases. The vibrant colour juxtapositions of her works also invited unexpected juxtapositions with artists like Claudio Tozzi and Antônio Henrique Amaral – notably associated with Pop Art and new figuration – with whom she shared an exhibition at São Paulo’s Bonfiglioli Gallery in 1977. We might consider the powerful corporeality of Ohtake’s oeuvre through sheer scale and chromatic vibrancy.
—Sofia Gotti
