Untitled,

ca. 1965

In 1971, Takaezu helped arrange an exhibition of the work of the abstract painter Tetsurō Sawada at the Hunterdon Art Center (now the Hunterdon Art Museum) in Clinton, New Jersey. Sawada entrusted Takaezu to donate some of the exhibited paintings to museums on her behalf, inviting her to keep one. Years later, Takaezu noticed a connection between the work she chose (at right) and a ceramic from her Tree series, prompting the renaming of this work, which is on view nearby: “I made a tree and it was the most unusual thing that the colors of the painting and my tree are exactly alike. So now I’ve named the tree Homage to Tetsurō Sawada.” Takaezu’s original inspiration for her Tree series was the sight of Hawaiian forests burned by lava flows. The blackened earth tones of her work, suggesting natural destruction, resonate with the violent gestures of the slashing brushstrokes in Sawada’s paintings.