Shinkichi Tajiri - My secret garden no. 3.

Year: 1975
Technique: Offset printing
Signature: Hand signed by artist.
Edition: 55/190
Condition: Good
Sheet size: 56 x 76 cm.
Framed: No.
Very good condition considering the age of the work, never framed.

Shinkichi Tajiri (1923-2009)
Shinkichi George Tajiri (Los Angeles, December 7, 1923 - Baarlo, March 15, 2009) was a Dutch-American sculptor of Japanese descent (a nisei or second-generation emigrant from Japan). He also painted, photographed and made films.
Tajiri was born in Watts, a working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, the fifth of seven children of issei (first-generation immigrants) Ryukichi Tajiri and Fuyo Kikuta, who emigrated from Japan to the United States in 1906 and 1913, respectively. In 1936, the family moved to San Diego. When Tajiri was fifteen, his father died. In 1940, he received his first lessons in sculpture from Donal Hord.
In 1942, Tajiri was imprisoned with many other Americans of Japanese descent, first in the stables of Santa Anita Racetrack and then in the Poston "3" concentration camp in Arizona. A year later he volunteered for the army and was sent to Italy to fight. On July 9, 1944, he was wounded during an attack on Castellina and was hospitalized in Rome until December. In 1945 he was stationed successively in Marseille, Nancy, Reims, Heidelberg and Seckenheim. He had his first exhibition in Mannheim. In early January 1946, Tajiri was demobilized and joined his mother and sister in Chicago. He took a job with an antique dealer and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In protest against the treatment of his population during the war, Tajiri left the United States in 1948. He arrived in Le Havre on 28 September of that year and settled in the Montparnasse district of Paris, where he had already been on leave during the war. He studied with Ossip Zadkine until November 1949, then with Fernand Léger until September 1950, and then for a year at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. On 25 May 1951 he married Denise Martin, but the marriage was dissolved in 1954. In the meantime he had met the Dutch sculptress Ferdi Jansen from Arnhem, with whom he moved to Amsterdam in 1956. In 1962 the family, which by then included two daughters, settled in Scheres Castle in Baarlo. Jansen died in 1969. In 1976 Tajiri married for the third time, to Suzanne van der Capellen.

In 1949 Tajiri came into contact with the Cobra group and exhibited with them at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His first exhibition since he had settled in the Netherlands in 1956 took place at the Hofwijck estate in Voorburg. There he exhibited together with Wessel Couzijn and Carel Visser, under the auspices of De Nieuwe Ploeg. In 1959 he founded the Groep Amsterdam together with Couzijn, Hans Verhulst, Ben Guntenaar and Carel Kneulman. Tajiri was invited to participate in documenta II of (1959), documenta III of 1964 and the 4. documenta of 1968 in the German city of Kassel. From 1969 to 1989 Tajiri was a professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. In the meantime he was commissioned by the city of Amsterdam to create a work of art for Noord: Ontmoetingsplaats.

On 25 June 2005, Tajiri was appointed honorary citizen of the municipality of Maasbree and on 7 December 2007 he was knighted in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, for his exceptional commitment and the cultural-historical significance of his activities.

On 2 May 2007, Queen Beatrix unveiled four statues of Tajiri in Venlo. The six-metre-high statues stand on either side of the city bridge of Venlo. This bridge, which replaced a bridge blown up during the war, functions as a connection between the city centre and the Blerick district, and the statues function as 'guardians' of the bridge, and must protect the bridge from war and violence.
In the courtyard of the Cobra Museum, Tajiri created a Japanese pebble garden.
Shinkichi Tajiri was granted Dutch citizenship on December 7, 2008 and died in 2009 at the age of 85.

After the artist's death, several initiatives were developed to establish a museum dedicated to the artist. For example, in 2009, there was a design by Rudi Fuchs for a Tajiri museum in Venlo, which did not make it. In the years that followed, the family of the deceased artist negotiated with the municipality of Venlo about the establishment of a museum. In 2013, the municipality of Peel en Maas, together with Tajiri's daughters, presented a plan to establish a Tajiri centre in Scheres Castle in Baarlo, where he had lived since 1962. Due to a lack of interest and money, the plans were never realised.