After studying French and Western art at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in the early years of the 20th century, Tsuguharu Foujita left Japan for Paris seeking broader horizons beyond the conventions of his native culture. This decisive move allowed him to assert himself both personally and artistically, and to develop a highly individual style shaped by the encounter between Japanese tradition and Western modernity. Upon arriving in Paris, Foujita settled in Montparnasse and became closely associated with the avant-garde circle, forming friendships with artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Kees Van Dongen, Chaïm Soutine, André Derain and Pablo Picasso. His early works combine a stylised form of Cubism with Japanese linearity and a refined sense of surface. An exceptional draughtsman, he favoured precise contours and controlled, economical means, often working with finely applied media that lend his works their distinctive clarity.
After extensive travels in the Americas and Asia during the 1930s, and after a prolonged return to Japan during the war years, he settled permanently in France in 1950. As he resumed his career, he exhibited regularly while remaining firmly attached to figurative art. His fame in Parisian society was inseparable from his carefully constructed public image: Foujita’s distinctive appearance, with his straight fringe and round black glasses (fig. 1) became emblematic of Montparnasse during the Années Folles.
On our sheet, the representation of Foujita’s glasses evokes the blason, a Renaissance poetic form devoted to the praise of a single feature. As with Gustave Courbet’s pipe in the 19th century, the object serves as a personal signifier closely associated with the artist’s identity. It may thus be read as an oblique form of self-portraiture. Reduced to this familiar accessory, the artist’s presence is only suggested while an everyday object is transformed into a concise statement of authorship and self-awareness.