Tomie Ohtake - Biography and Work: National Recognition, the Institute, and Innovation

In November 2001, the Instituto Tomie Ohtake was inaugurated to celebrate the artist's 88th birthday.

The space is located in the western zone of the city of São Paulo, aiming to hold exhibitions of visual arts and promote culture in general.

In 2009 and 2010, her sculptures traveled to the gardens of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan.

But history holds a bizarre detail:

The artist was invited to create a public work that would be installed at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

In 2010, as part of the celebrations of her 97th birthday, the Instituto Tomie Ohtake held an exhibition with various paintings created by Tomie.

The paintings explored the possibilities of the circle.

In 2012, Tomie created a series of blue paintings, highlighting her interest in self-renewal through a new type of brushstroke.

The work maintained movement and depth, becoming increasingly singular.

Legacy of an Artist

In 2013, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, around 17 exhibitions were held throughout Brazil in her honor.

The standout show was ‘Gesto and Geometric Reason’, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff; and two other exhibitions, jointly curated by Agnaldo Farias and Paulo Miyada, titled: Tomie Ohtake Correspondences and Influx of Forms.

In December 2014, filmmaker Tizuka Yamasaki released the documentary ‘Tomie’, offering a delicate and affectionate portrait of the artist's universe.

Intimate glimpses of her life are intercut with interviews conducted with Paulo Herkenhoff, Agnaldo Farias, and Miguel Chaia.

Centenarian, Tomie lived until her 101st year.

In the last two years, she painted around 30 new canvases and continued working until her passing on February 12, 2015.

To understand the rest of this journey, continue to our next article: Tomie Ohtake - Biography and Work: The Legacy of her Monumental Works.