Léonard FOUJITA

Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968): Biography, Drawings and Fine Art Prints for Collectors

Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita was the Japanese star of the School of Paris. Born in Tokyo in 1886, he arrived in Montparnasse in 1913 and by the 1920s had become one of the most famous artists in Paris, known for his porcelain-smooth white grounds, ink lines as fine as a hair, and a cast of nudes, children and cats that collectors still recognize at a glance. He also had real ties to America: he exhibited in the United States, taught in Brooklyn and published one of the most coveted cat books of the century in New York. His etchings, woodcuts and color lithographs are the most accessible way to own his work today.

Right now Le Coin des Arts offers one unique work by Foujita: Le Matin (1956), a mixed-media piece from his final French period. We also track the market for his fine art prints and add them when strong, well-documented impressions come up. Click “follow the artist” to get an alert.

Early Years: From Tokyo to Paris

Fujita Tsuguharu was born on November 27, 1886, in Tokyo’s Ushigome district; his father was an army doctor. He trained in Western-style painting under Kuroda Seiki at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and graduated in 1910. In 1913 he moved to Paris, where Modigliani, Soutine, Kisling, Pascin and Ossip Zadkine were his Montparnasse neighbors. After stays in London during World War I, he got his breakthrough on June 1, 1917, with a solo show of 110 watercolors at the Galerie Chéron.

Paris in the 1920s: The Famous White Ground

Foujita’s signature look took shape in the early 1920s: a creamy ground built from linseed oil, chalk or lead white and magnesium silicate, then drawn over with a fine brush in ink. His Reclining Nude with Toile de Jouy (1922), modeled – according to the artist – by Kiki de Montparnasse, is the classic example; Foujita donated it to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 1961. His muse Youki (Lucie Badoud) became his wife in 1929, the year he made his first trip back to Japan in sixteen years.

Foujita and America: Cats, California and New York

In 1930, the New York publisher Covici Friede issued A Book of Cats, twenty etchings by Foujita paired with prose poems by Michael Joseph, in an edition of 500 signed copies; today it is one of the most sought-after illustrated books on the subject, and plates are held by the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. In 1931 he set off with Madeleine Lequeux on a long tour of Latin America that ended in Mexico; on July 5, 1933, the couple reached Los Angeles, where the Dalzell-Hatfield Gallery opened a solo show of 87 works, followed by a show at the Courvoisier Gallery in San Francisco. Foujita sailed for Japan in November 1933.

During World War II he painted huge battle scenes for the Japanese army, and that past followed him. When he arrived in New York on March 10, 1949, he taught briefly at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, while the painter Ben Shahn and others protested his presence. His show Foujita, Recent Paintings and Drawings ran at the Mathias Komor Gallery from November 11 to 26, 1949. One of the canvases he painted that June in Manhattan, La fête d’anniversaire, inscribed “Foujita 1949 NYC,” sold at Bonhams in London in 2018 for more than £7 million – a reminder that his New York months were artistically productive. In January 1950 he left for France with his wife Kimiyo, vowing never to leave again.

A French Citizen and the Reims Chapel

Foujita designed the sets and costumes for Madama Butterfly at La Scala in 1951, married Kimiyo in Paris in 1954 and became a French citizen in 1955. On October 14, 1959, he was baptized in Reims Cathedral with champagne executive René Lalou of Mumm as his godfather, and took the name Léonard, after Leonardo da Vinci. From the early 1960s he lived in Villiers-le-Bâcle, outside Paris (now the Maison-atelier Foujita museum). His final masterpiece, the Chapel of Our Lady of Peace in Reims – frescoes by Foujita, stained glass made to his designs by Charles Marq – was inaugurated on October 18, 1966. He died in Zurich on January 29, 1968, and is buried in the chapel.

Where to See Foujita in American Museums

Several US museums hold his works on paper: the National Gallery of Art in Washington has the portfolio Les Enfants (c. 1929), with prints signed and numbered in graphite; the Brooklyn Museum owns his lithograph Portrait of a Girl with Cat; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco preserve pages from Légendes japonaises. In Europe, the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims hold major groups, and the 2018 exhibition at the Musée Maillol in Paris marked the 50th anniversary of his death.

Foujita’s Prints and Illustrated Books

Foujita worked in etching and engraving, woodcut and lithography, very often for illustrated books: Les Aventures du roi Pausole (1925, woodcuts), A Book of Cats (1930), La Rivière enchantée (1951, etchings), Le Dragon des mers (c. 1955, engravings) and, for publisher Pierre de Tartas, Petits métiers et gagne-petit (1960) and La Mésangère (1963, color lithographs). The catalog raisonné is by Sylvie Buisson – vol. I with Dominique Buisson (ACR Édition, 1987), vol. II (ACR Édition, 2001), plus Foujita inédits (2007), with vol. IV in progress. Every medium is numbered by year: “Buisson 64.287” is a 1964 lithograph (Mère et fille), “Buisson 60.28” the 1960 Les Trois Grâces.

How to Buy a Foujita Print or Original Work

Get the authentication right. For a unique drawing or mixed-media work like Le Matin, the go-to expert is Sylvie Buisson; leading auction houses cite her certificates or planned inclusion in volume IV. No certificate and no documented provenance? Walk away.

Lifetime vs. posthumous vs. reproduction. This is where most buyers go wrong. Only impressions printed and hand-signed during Foujita’s lifetime (before 1968) are original prints. Many “Foujita lithographs” are really reproductions: the plates of Légendes japonaises (1922-23) are line-block reproductions, and those from Propos d’un intoxiqué (1929) color reproductions. Anything issued after 1968 without a hand signature is not a Foujita print. Read what is an original print.

Check the signature. Look for “Foujita” in pencil in the margin, often with his name in Japanese characters. A signature in the plate is printed (the signature).

Posters aren’t prints. The 1960 Les Trois Grâces poster from the Mourlot studio, made for the Peintres Témoins de leur Temps show at the Musée Galliera, is a lithograph but is signed in the stone and unnumbered (posters).

Edition, paper and condition. Match the numbering with the catalog or the book’s colophon (the printing process). His thin Japanese papers are prone to foxing and fading, so choose museum-grade framing. See our authenticity guarantees.

Le Coin des Arts picks Foujita works for quality, provenance and condition. Compare him with Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Ossip Zadkine and Kumi Sugai, or browse modern art and engravings and lithographs.

Sources and References

Sylvie and Dominique Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita, vol. I, ACR Édition, 1987 · Sylvie Buisson, Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita, vol. II, ACR Édition, 2001 · Foujita and Michael Joseph, A Book of Cats, Covici Friede, New York, 1930 · Greg Robinson and Seth Jacobowitz, “Léonard Foujita”, Discover Nikkei, 2021 · National Gallery of Art – Les Enfants · Brooklyn Museum – Portrait of a Girl with Cat · The Ringling – A Book of Cats · Bonhams – La fête d’anniversaire (New York, 1949)