In the summer of 1924, fresh out of art school in Japan and settling into the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, Yuzo Saeki (1898-1928) was taken by his classmate Katsuzo Satomi to have his work critiqued by the Fauvist painter, anarchist and journalist Maurice de Vlaminck. Just when he was getting under way as an artist, it was to be a decisive moment in Saeki's painting career. What the French painter said about what Saeki showed him was a typical Vlaminck outburst: "What academicism!" he said, referring to the style taught in the major schools in Paris.

The provocateur continued to rant at Saeki, who was still acclimatizing to French, for another hour and half. Exactly which work so chafed Vlaminck remains unknown, but two pieces from "Dreams of Art, Yuzo Saeki in Paris," running at Osaka City Museum of Modern Art till March 25, show Saeki's sudden change in artistic direction -- one that hastened his death.

Saeki had first studied painting under Rinsaku Akamatsu while at middle school, learning the Impressionist style of its Japanese innovator, Seiki Kuroda. "Distant View of Paris" (1924) is a carefully arranged landscape with rocky foreground, a middleground composed of various buildings, and a somber sky that rises behind.