Curriculum

"When one knows how to build, it is easier to deconstruct."

Encouraged by a Japanese father, he himself a designer, Simone Tanaka was able to develop her skills at academic-based schools which provided her a solid foundation to master drawing.

The inerasable watercolor forges the discipline and attentiveness required by millenary techniques. Coherent with her own trajectory, the encounter with painting is unavoidable. Considering the formal rigor in terms of color, texture and composition, her painting might be considered traditional. But, in essence, her painting sets imagination free, is intuitive and leads neither to the pre-conceived nor to what is real. It is also open to feelings, interpretations and emotions. To the eyes of each spectator it offers a different selection of what he/she expects to see in the painting. Somehow, each painting becomes a unique and individual experience.

The Eastern part of her family has become somewhat dispersed. Perhaps this was the starting point of her search: the reason for her identity, her affinity with the Japanese-Brazilian artists Flavio Shiro, Tomie Ohtake, Manabu Mabe, and others. A lyric abstraction, laden with the color of the real atmosphere that surrounds her. And there is sun in her color! There is tension as well. Her twighligh reds and emotive greens, her blues – tender and cuddling at times, grim and nearly silent at others – and the overlapping transparencies, all of them unaffectedly display her intimacy with the subject of her painting and her accessories – acrylic paint, brushes, canvas. Between the gesture and the graphism of her Eastern heritage, Simone chooses both. Her nimble brushstrokes may halt on petty details when – she says joking – “the Tanaka half takes over”.

João Henrique Amaral

"Everything we experience adds something to us. I have a little of Gandhi, of Picasso, of Fernando Pessoa, Lindolf Bell, Manabu Mabe, Simone de Beauvoir, Vivaldi, of my ancestors, of sorrows, of John Does, of Marys, of Sao Paulo, of Blumenau, of shadows, of lights, of the Meirelles, of the Duartes, of the Tanakas, of memories, of imagination..."

Simone Tanaka

Born in Sao Paulo, currently leaving in Curitiba. Simone began her design studies in 1970 at the E.N.D. (National Design School – SP). She has participated in several courses and workshops since. She gratuated in Visual Communication at MackenzieUniversity – SP.

She participated in the Watercolor and Design Workshops at the Modern Art Museum -SP, Engraving Workshop with the artist Itajai Martins, Creation Lab at SENAC,Graphic Design at SENAI, Pottery, Sculpture, Art History and others.

Major exhibitions:

  • Watercolor and Drawing Group Exhibition – Modern Art Museum – SP -1989.
  • Contemporary Art Salon – Itajai- SC – 1993 and 1999.
  • Exhibition at Galeria Municipal de Artes – Blumenau-SC – 1993
  • Contemporary Art Exhibition at I Salão Victor Meirelles – Art Museum of Santa Catarina – SC -1993.
  • Group Exhibition of Artists from Santa Catarina – Art Museum of Santa Catarina – SC- 1994.
  • Art Circuit in Santa Catarina – Blumenau, Rio do Sul, Chapeco and Florianopolis – 1993.
  • First Art Salon Elke Hering – Contemporary Art Exhibition -1994 – Special Juri Award – SC – 1994.
  • ARTE X 4 – State Secretariat of Culture – Curitiba – PR -1995.
  • Seventh Contemporary Brazilian Award of Arts – SP Gold Medal – 1996.
  • New Age of Brazilian Plastic Arts Salon – SP – Silver Medal – 1996.
  • Exhibition at Fernando Beck Cultural Space – Florianopolis – SC – 1997.
  • Exhibition at Regional University of Blumenau – SC -1997.
  • Official Brazilian Salon for the 500th Anniversary of America – sponsored by the Municipal Secretariat of Sao Paulo-1999.