Eventail 1945

Kenzo Okada made this painting, Eventail, with soft colours and geometric shapes, where you can almost feel the shift from one colour to another. I imagine Okada standing back, squinting, turning the canvas, maybe even wiping away sections. Look at that dark brushstroke, thick with pigment, dragging across the surface like a shadow. It feels like memory trying to find its form. You can see the hand of the artist in the colour choices, coral, pale yellow, shades of green, responding to something, perhaps a landscape. There's an area near the bottom that does give the impression of a fan, the titular Eventail, fanning out! Okada lived through so much, and like many painters of his generation, he carried forward the concerns of the earlier abstractionists like Rothko, but pushed it further, into something so very much his own. It’s as though he’s inviting us to feel our way through it. Painting becomes a record of that feeling, and a way to share it.