Minako Takahashi


Region: Montreal Quebec
Generation:
Born 1939, Tokyo Japan

Bio

Minako Takahashi is a visual and mixed media artist. She was born in Tokyo and moved to Takefu, Fukui-ken at the age of two. While a student at Takefu high school, her art work was chosen for inclusion in such exhibitions as the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper national student art exhibition and the modern art exhibition at Tokyo Ueno Art Museum. After graduating, Takahashi studied design at the Bunka Institute for Fashion Design in Tokyo. While learning traditional Japanese sumi-e techniques, she also immersed herself in the production of abstract oil paintings.

In 1969, Takahashi moved to Montreal, where she began to teach sumi-e and Japanese paper collage techniques. She has held many solo exhibitions in libraries and cultural centres in Montreal and surrounding areas, as well as at the Japan Foundation in Toronto. Takahashi has also exhibited internationally in such places as the Taiwan National Art Museum’s International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Salon de Mai, and Salon d’Automne. In 2003, the Salon de Mai juror Frank Wohlfahrt said of her entry: ‘Minako Takahashi has given us a work where collage and the colour red create a disturbance that suitably questions the traditional field of sumi-e.’

In Japan, Takahashi has exhibited and won prizes in many public exhibitions, including a solo show at the Fukui Prefectural Art Museum. Since 2014, she has been affiliated with the Japanese artists’ group ‘ART MIRAI’ (The Future of Art), and exhibits every year in their group exhibition at the Tokyo National New Art Museum as an invited creator.