Few Japanese artists have received the extremes of acclaim and censure that Leonard Foujita (Tsuguharu Fujita, 1886-1968) has. Based in Paris from 1913 he became Japan's only painter of international significance at that time, and by the 1920s, he commanded prices comparable to Picasso. As a leading and enthusiastic painter for Japan's military during World War II, he was subsequently vilified in the postwar manhunts seeking ideological complicity.
Foujita studied the mix of Impressionism and French Academicism that was at the avant-garde of Japanese oil painting under Seiki Kuroda. Frustrated by three rejections from government-sponsored exhibitions, he sailed for Paris, where he avoided the senior Japanese artists in residence and made Cubist paintings until he could determine his own style.
The popularity of his grand fond blanc paintings — milky female nudes, carefully outlined on white backgrounds — launched Foujita to upward mobility and its perks, including a chauffeur-driven car. Cutting a cosmopolitan, bohemian figure with his bowl cut, round glasses and earrings, the demand for his self-portraits was testament his pin-up status. His fame, however, did not follow him to Japan in 1929. When he tried to sell paintings to cover French tax arrears, he was slammed for self-promotion by an audience unfamiliar with his work.