Vintage Mira Fujita Mysterious & Beautiful Ivory Wall Plaque Art Inlay VERY RARE

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Vintage Mira Fujita Mysterious & Beautiful Ivory Wall Plaque Art Inlay VERY RARE:
$180.00

Rare, highly sought-after vintage plaster art inlay by Mira Fujita 1960\'s/early 70\'s. It has chip missing on the very top and I took a picture of it. This flaw is on the very top it is not very noticeable when hung high up on a wall. Please see photos for overall condition. Some scratches and scuffs throughout from age. It is still a mysterious and beautiful piece of art by a very well known artist. Measurments: 9\" tall by 6-1/8\" wide.Mira Fujita

Short DescriptionHer work is notable for the way in which it depicts both graceful feminine beauty and a strength that borders on aloofness.
Long DescriptionMirano Fujita was both the first woman and last artist to make a name for herself in jojo-ga, a genre of illustrations or paintings of women portrayed in a lyrical style that was popular from the 1920s to 1960s. Keiko Nakamura, curator at Yayoi Museum, says Fujita\'s approach, too, was unusual, because of her subjects\' looks of determination, an image that was becoming popular among the increasingly expressive young women of the time.

The eldest daughter of a calligrapher in Kagawa Prefecture, Fujita entered Tama Art University in 1948 to study nihon-ga painting. While there, she won several awards. In 1953, she began contributing illustrations to Jogakusei no Tomo, a girls\' magazine that attracted readers with its stories, unlike other girls\' publications that relied on manga.

Fujita\'s mature, confident looking girls were more suited to the nature of the \"jogakusei no tomo,\" or \"schoolgirls\' friends,\" with their powerful eyes and willful expressions that differed from the meek, melancholic countenances that were common in the jojo-ga genre at the time. In short, Nakamura says, Fujita\'s drawings found an audience with young women who had become more confident in the years following World War II.

The artist\'s popularity soon took off and she increased the scope in which she worked.

For her cover art of 1968\'s Shinme no Kisetsu, Fujita painted a clean-cut, short-haired girl in a sailor school uniform. Much like the girls she drew for magazines such as Junior Bungei, her characters make up with purity and brightness for what they lack in glamour. The cover illustration is one of 30 being shown to the public for the first time.

\"Fujita is said to have tried to draw girls from different angles or with different techniques to increase the variety of her work, as she always had to draw them as busts,\" the curator said.

In 1972, Fujita moved to Paris, where she had previously lived for three years. Back in Japan, the magazine industry was shifting its focus to manga instead of girls\' stories, leading Fujita to take more work in Europe. At this point, she changed her name to Mira Fujita.

In Europe, Fujita\'s works were called \"mysterious and beautiful,\" according to Nakamura, who added that her sophisticated and tranquil line work--itself influenced through the study of Japanese art--was novel for people on the Continent.

\"She started to become popular with her series of clowns and harlequins,\" Nakamura said. \"The drawings were a commission from a Paris poster company; she first painted a young woman as a clown against a purple background, but was asked to resubmit it with a black background, which was the norm for the genre. She did as they asked, but people really took to the purple version, leading to the serialization of her clown works.\"

In Europe, Fujita contributed work for books and posters in Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries, and released a number of goods bearing her drawings. Although she had fallen into obscurity back here in Japan, Fujita had won wide recognition in her new home.

\"But people have been rediscovering her here in Japan over the past few years--especially young women,\" the curator said. \"I noticed that many of the art students who come to our museum to practice find themselves entranced by her drawings in the books we have. She seems to be moving back into the limelight.\"

This is taken from Mirano Fujita\'s beautiful artistic journey
Kumi Matsumau / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer The Daily Yomiuri April 15 2011