MICHIKO ITATANI
Gallery
From the Rain Maker’s Series #5, oil on canvas 42”x 34”
“Michiko Itatani is clearly of her time in addressing the issues of fragmentation and continuity as an inescapable fact of twentieth century life. The themes of physical and spiritual confinement versus transcendence are effectively used as examples of duality’s within a united whole. These outer and inner voices form the pulse of our life experiences. Ms. Itatani’s important works speak to this struggle within the human condition and our attempts to make sense out of chaos.” Ed Paschke, catalogue essay for the exhibition at the Wright Museum of Art, WI 1994
“Her painting has been idiosyncratic from the beginning, because it was not her expected profession but something discovered after her arrival in the U.S. (from Japan). Her intention was to study philosophy, and perhaps it is the philosophy, and perhaps philosophical approach to experience – observing, comparing, weighing, analyzing, looking for relationships and consistencies and meaning, turning both the phenomenon and the expression of it over and over in search for resolution – that underpins her art.” Janet Kopolos“The Sea of Uncertainty” catalogue essay for Michiko Itatani -Paintings since 1984, Chicago Cultural Center, 1992
A native of Japan, Michiko Itatani is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been a professor of painting since 1979. She has received numerous prestigious awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, two Illinois Arts Council Artist’s Fellowships; and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her work is held in the public collections of the The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Wright Museum, Beloit, WI; Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA; Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland; American Embassy Permanent Collection, Brasilia, Brazil; Villa-Haiss-Museum, Zell am Harmersback, Germany; Tokoha Museum, Shizuoka, Japan; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Musee du Quebec, Quebec, Canada; Museu D’art Contemporani (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain and others.