Seigo Takatsuka (1930-2007) was a Japanese artist known for his numerous depictions of beautiful nudes that became material for calendars and postcards. Takatsuka can be classified as a modern bijinga artist: his women look like top models on the pages of Vogue. Unlike the works of Helmut Newton, Takatsuka's images, either because of his models' appearance or the skill of the artist, are not about cold sexuality but rather about youth and elegance.
Seigo Takatsuka (gei-shin.co.jp)
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Doing Everything At Once
Seigo Takatsuka was born in 1930 in Iwai, Okoyama City. After graduation from Okayama Prefectural Second High School, Takatsuka enrolled at the Tokyo University of the Arts and studied in the Department of Oil Painting. His teachers were yoga painters Inosuke Hazama, Mamoru Kubo, Ryuzaburo Umehara, and Takeshi Hayashi. Having finished his studies at the university in 1953, Takasuka began participating in the Japan Independent Exhibition on the advice of Inosuke Hazama. The following year, the artist organized the 1st exhibition of "8 People's Association" with his friends at Muramatsu Gallery in Ginza, where, in 1955, his solo exhibition took place. In the 1950s, Takatsuka was engaged in movie production, costume design, and ballet stage art in collaboration with the Ballet Company of Momoko Tani (1921-2015), a Japanese ballet dancer and choreographer. Besides visual art, Takatsuka also produced movie scripts working together with film director Yasujiro Ozu. In the 1960s and 1970s, the artist participated in many local and international exhibitions. In 1980, he published drawings of nude women, which made his art extremely popular. Another curious fact is Takatsuka's trip to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture in 1981, though, the details of this trip are unknown.
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Fig. 20. Wooden sculpture of a girl in a hat (tokyoartbeat.com)
In the extended Premium edition of the article you can discover more about Takatsuka's sculptures and minimalistic drawings, his stylistic similarities with the traditional bijin-ga and no less than 151 additional images of his lovable nudes.
Click HERE for the flirtatious nudes of the fashion photographer Helmut Newton
Sources: Wikipedia.org; gei-shin.co.jp
