signed on the wooden piëdestal h.47 cm
Sold
About the artist
Shinkichi George Tajiri (Los Angeles, December 7, 1923 – Baarlo, March 15, 2009) was a Dutch-American sculptor of Japanese descent (a Nisei, or second-generation immigrant from Japan). He was also active in painting, photography, and filmmaking.
In protest against the treatment of his ethnic group (internment in the U.S.) during the war, Tajiri left the United States in 1948. He arrived in Le Havre on September 28 of that year and settled in the Montparnasse district of Paris, where he had previously spent leave during the war. He studied with Ossip Zadkine until November 1949, then with Fernand Léger until September 1950, and subsequently for a year at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. On May 25, 1951, he married Denise Martin, but the marriage was dissolved in 1954. In the meantime, he had met the Dutch sculptor Ferdi Jansen from Arnhem, with whom he moved to Amsterdam in 1956. In 1962, the family, which by then had two daughters, settled in Scheres Castle in Baarlo. Jansen died in 1969. In 1976, Tajiri married for the third time, to Suzanne van der Capellen.
In 1949, Tajiri became involved with the Cobra group and exhibited with them at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His first exhibition since settling in the Netherlands in 1956 took place at the Hofwijck country estate in Voorburg. There he exhibited alongside Wessel Couzijn and Carel Visser, under the auspices of De Nieuwe Ploeg.