Untitled, 1962

Tomie Ohtake’s groundbreaking paintings are seminal to Brazilian art history as the artist was able to create a synthesis between geometry and informality. In the first half of the 1960s, she began using paper cuttings from magazines as a starting point for her paintings. With a strong and consistent body of work which stems from this technique, she succeeded in infusing her artworks concomitantly with chance and control. Shown here is a selection of paintings produced between the 1960s and 1980s.

Tomie Ohtake (born 1913 in Kyoto) began working as an artist in the 1950s, investigating rich and varied juxtapositions of lines, shapes, colors, and their effect on the viewer. Ohtake gave up on the representation of the outside world and chose to privilege expressive painting, which present loose brush-work and ethereal forms that established a relationship between Zen rituals and geometric signs. The artist participated in several biennials, including seven editions of the Bienal de São Paulo and the 36th La Biennale di Venezia (1972). She died 2015 in São Paulo.