Takao Tanabe CM OBC

2013 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts

Takao Tanabe is a leading Canadian landscape painter and printmaker. Having stared his career as an abstract painter, curving forms and gray tonalities are prevalent in his paintings. Takao Tanabe is known for his minimalist style, eliminating non-essential details to create serene compositions in his pieces. His work reveals a preoccupation with the search for quiet pristine landscapes in nature.

Born in 1926 near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Takao Tanabe was one of the many Japanese-Canadians interned during World War II. After the war ended, Takao Tanabe trained with Joseph Plaskett at the Winnipeg School of Art in Manitoba, and subsequently attended the University of Manitoba. In 1951, he travelled to New York to study under Hans Hoffman and Reuben Tam at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He returned to Canada and briefly attended the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta before travelling to Europe for two years and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.

From 1959 to 1961, Takao Tanabe studied Japanese ink painting and calligraphy under Ikuo Hirayama and Yangrida Taiun, a master of large-scale single-stroke Zen calligraphy, at the Tokyo University of Arts. While Takao Tanabe was in Tokyo, his abstract paintings were succeeded by Japanese-influenced ink drawings. When he moved to New York City from 1969 to 1972, he shifted towards painting hard-edge geometric abstracts featuring bold colours. This evolved into semi-abstract landscapes influenced by Takao Tanabe’s encounters with the northern Pennsylvania wilderness, the Hudson River Valley and the Canadian prairies and foothills.

In 1973, Takao Tanabe became the head of the Art Department and was the Artist-in-Residence at the Banff School of Fine Arts. In 1980, he moved to Vancouver Island where he continues to live and work.

Takao Tanabe, South Moresby, Queen Charlotte Islands, 1984. Watercolour on paper. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Gift of Takao Tanabe. Takao Tanabe is well recognized Canadian artist and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. He has been awarded the Order of British Columbia in 1993, the Order of Canada in 1999, and in 2013, Takao Tanabe received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. In 2017, Takao Tanabe established the Takao Tanabe Painting Prize for Young Artists to recognize the work of up and coming Canadian Artists. Takao Tanabe’s work is held in private and public collections across Canada – including the National Gallery of Canada and the Audain Art Museum.