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OTAMA KIYOHARA
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O'TAMA KIYOHARA
Tama's origins
Tama Kiyohara was born in Tokyo on the 10th of June 1861
As a child she attended the atelier of a master’s traditional painting school Kano. Tama most likely took on her artistic name Eiju, meaning eternal life, from a certain Eishu whom very little is known about.
ORIGINS
Vincenzo Ragusa
Vincenzo Ragusa was, at the time, sculpture professor at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo.
In 1877 Tama met Vincenzo. She posed for him as a model for a plaster bust. The sculptor then introduced her to western painting techniques by copying masterpieces of the Italian masters (Leonardo, Raffaello) and by reproducing artistic pieces from his collection.
Tama learned this new expressive language in a very short time showing exceptional technical skills and above all broad-mindedness
Meeting with V. Ragusa
Tama leaves Japan
Due to their artistic partnership, Vincenzo Ragusa and Tama became involved with each other and she followed the sculptor when he returned to Palermo in 1882, and became well-known in the city’s cultural landscape. In 1889 she was baptised and took the name Eleonora.
Towards Sicily
Tama's career in Palermo
She became a director and a professor of painting in the women’s section of the school of the Arts founded by Ragusa and after the closing of this section she committed herself with passion to private teaching and to her artistic production.
She participated in numerous exhibitions in Palermo, Venezia and Roma, being awarded with the silver medal at the national Expo in Palermo in 1891-92. When the Japanese painter's art became fashionable, she was even commissioned mural decorations of various villas in Palermo (villa Guzzardi-Villa Caruso).
Her career
Marriage to Vincenzo Ragusa
In 1901 she married Vincenzo Ragusa in a civil ceremony.
She was one of the first Japanese women to establish herself as a painter outside her country.
Marriage
A few years after her husband’s death, in 1927, she was joined by a great-grandson, who convinced her to return to Japan after a fifty-one-year absence.
She opened a studio next to her home of origin and her works were shown in various exhibitions. She died in Tokyo on April 6 1939, and following her wishes, half of her ashes were returned to Palermo and buried in the tomb of Vincenzo Ragusa in the cemetery of “Rotoli”.
Works
Tama produced a great quantity of works of art by using different techniques, such as watercolors,pastels, oil on canvas etc : some of them were called 'The Painted Collection' because they contained some of the Japanese works of Arts that the artist and her husband sold to the Pigorini museum in Rome in 1899.
Today , most of the couple's works of art can be admired in the museum of Liceo Artistico 'V.Ragusa- O. Kiyohara' in Palermo.