Tetsu Okada

Tetsu Okada (岡田徹, 1914–2007) was a Japanese painter associated with Surrealism and avant-garde art in Nagoya. Largely self-taught, he was active in the city's prewar Surrealist milieu and helped form the groups Avant-Garde, Torupi, and the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club. In 1941, during the wartime repression of Japanese Surrealism, the Special Higher Police searched his home and confiscated most of the works and records in his studio. After World War II, he remained active as a painter, organizer, and teacher in the Nagoya art world.

Life and career Okada was born in Nagoya in 1914.

In 1936, Okada, Kaneo Togawa, Sanshin Yoshikawa, and other painters formed the group Avant-Garde. Yoshio Shimozato supported the group and was later invited to lead its successor, Torupi, which was formed in 1937. Later that year, Okada also participated in the formation of the interdisciplinary Nagoya Avant-Garde Club, which brought together painters, critics, poets, and photographers in Nagoya.

The 1990 exhibition catalogue published by the Nagoya City Art Museum states that the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club was formed in November 1937 around Shimozato and Chirū Yamanaka. It lists Okada among its founding members, together with painters including Kaneo Togawa, Sanshin Yoshikawa, Noboru Ōguchi, Tatsuo Imai, Shigeaki Ikai, Kaoru Andō, , and Kazuyuki Mitsuzaki, as well as photographers Minoru Sakata and Seikō Samizo. Okada and Yamamoto were thus active in different branches of the same broader Nagoya Surrealist network during the late 1930s. He was the subject of centenary and 110th-anniversary exhibitions at Kiyosu City Haruhi Museum of Art in 2014 and 2024, and of a 2024 exhibition at Nagoya Gallery devoted to "Tetsu Okada and Surrealism in Nagoya".