08/31/2026
TOSHIKO TAKAEZU featured in OBJECT STORIES II: CERAMIC COLLECTIONS 1975–2015 | 2026 catalog of available ceramics from Private Collections.
Two works by the renowned Toshiko Takaezu from the Victoria Schonfeld Collection are now available from Ferrin Contemporary.
“Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest abstract artists. Gifted with prodigious drive and vision, she combined inspirations from her own cultural background with currents from contemporary painting and sculpture, arriving at a unique expressionist idiom.
Born in Hawaii to a Japanese émigré family, Takaezu received her early training in ceramics in Honolulu, and then attended Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, when it was an epicenter for adventurous modernism. Already in this early phase in her career, she was able to see correspondences between Abstract Expressionism and the spiritually infused traditions of East Asia, such as calligraphy and tea ceremony. She combined these cross-cultural influences into a powerfully resolved synthesis.
Though made using traditional pottery techniques of wheel-throwing and glazing, the works for which she is best known – the closed forms – are best understood as sculptures, or perhaps as paintings-in-the-round. They are as individual as people are, varying greatly in scale and shape, color and texture, and in their internal tectonic rhythms. They have a close affinity with the work of other postwar expressionist artists, such as Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, and Mark Rothko.”
—Glenn Adamson, Toshiko Takaezu Foundation
Email [email protected] for more information, and view the full OBJECT STORIES II catalog in the link in our bio.
1 & 2: Toshiko Takaezu, Untitled, 1999, porcelain, 16.75 x 8 x 8”, Made in the Artist’s Studio, Toshiko Takaezu, to Frank Lloyd Gallery to The Victoria Schonfeld Collection (2000).
3 & 4: Toshiko Takaezu, “Untitled (648)”, 1998, porcelain, 6.5 x 4”. The Victoria Schonfeld Collection.
