The general image of Taro Okamoto’s work can be summed up as being: highly abstract forms with intense coloring employing primary colors. No nudes and no still-lifes. Most people believe that Taro Okamoto did not produce any realistic paintings.

Naturally, I thought the same myself. Apart from a few exceptions, such as works he produced during the war or death masks of relatives and friends, there are no realistic images by Taro. That is what I used to believe, in fact, even Toshiko Okamoto once stated that, ‘there are no self-portraits of Taro Okamoto’.

However, last year some amazing sketches came to light. They clearly date from the Kaminoge studio days and two of them feature Taro and Toshiko. This is doubtless the only self-portrait of him, drawn sixty years ago, and even Toshiko had forgotten about its existence. There is also a picture of a Toshiko that according to the people who knew her best, is the image of her when she was young, executed with amazing expressive skill. Both of them are the exact opposite of the usual image of his work, in that they display a quiet, gentle likeness.

This exhibition will present all the known lifelike pictures reproducing the expressions of people who were close to Taro. They are not pictures that were meant to be shown to the public.

Here you can find another Taro, one we did not know existed. However, there can be no doubt that it is still Taro.

Concurrent Exhibition:
‘Works by the winners of the 14th Okamoto Taro Memorial Award for Contemporary Art’

During this period new works by OLTA, winner of the ‘Taro Okamoto Prize’, and Toshitaka Machizuki, winner of the ‘Toshiko Okamoto Prize’ in the ‘14th Okamoto Taro Memorial Award for Contemporary Art’, will also be shown. We hope that you will enjoy these, too.