Takao Tanabe

Takao Tanabe, (born 16 September 1926) is a Canadian artist who painted abstractly for decades, but over time, his paintings became nature-based.

Biography Born Takao Izumi in Seal Cove, today part of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the son of a commercial fisherman, where he was the fifth of seven children. Tanabe and his family were interned with other Japanese-Canadians in the British Columbia interior during World War II. They were relocated first to a camp at Hasting Park in Vancouver and Lemon Creek in the Kootenays in the summer of 1942, where they were expected to build their own internment camp.

Tanabe attended the Winnipeg School of Art, Winnipeg, Manitoba (1946–1949), initially enrolling in a sign painting class as it would provide him with employable skills before becoming fascinated with art's potential outside of a commercial context. Upon returning to Vancouver in 1952, Tanabe took up mural painting and completed his first commissioned work, a mural for the University of British Columbia Art Gallery entitled The World We Live In in 1953.

Career His art has gone through many different phases. In his "inscapes" (he called his paintings after a term used by Gerald Manley Hopkins) of the late 1950s, Tanabe explored his memories of lit interiors, painting them abstractly and expressing them with calligraphic signs. In 1980, he returned to British Columbia where he lives and works on Vancouver Island. He is considered today a painter who primarily evokes the landscape of British Columbia in minimalist but detailed paintings.

In 2005, a major retrospective of his work curated by Ian Thom

In 2014, Tanabe said: ...I try to avoid brush marks so that it looks as though the paint has just floated on...

Major solo exhibitions Takao Tanabe: Inside Passage (2026), retrospective co-curated by the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, BC; National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia Early Works (2025), Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia Printmaker (2023), Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia A Modern Landscape (2021), West Vancouver Art Museum, West Vancouver, British Columbia Sumie: Ink Brush Paintings (2016), Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, Burnaby, British Columbia Chronicles of Form and Place: Works on Paper (2011), Burnaby Art Gallery (touring exhibition, to McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton; Nanaimo Art Gallery; The Reach, Abbotsford) Mountains in Winter (2009), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (touring exhibition, to Penticton Art Gallery; West Vancouver Art Museum) Takao Tanabe (2005), Vancouver Art Gallery (touring exhibition, to Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario)

Awards and honours Member of the Order of Canada Order of British Columbia Two honorary doctorates Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts Member, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2013)

Record sale prices At the Heffel auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art, May 23, 2024, Lot 004, Nootka 1/91: in Hanna Channel, acrylic on canvas, 27 x 59 in, 68.6 x 149.9 cm, Estimate: $60,000 - $80,000 CAD, Sold for: $451,250 (including Buyer's Premium).