Takao Tanabe

Takao Tanabe: Inside Passage

Edited by James Harbeck, essays by Sherri Shinobu Kajiwara, Steven McNeil, Jonathan Shaughnessy, and Kiriko Watanabe.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Takao Tanabe: Inside Passage organized by the Audain Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the National Gallery of Canada and appearing at each of these venues on the following dates:

Audain Art Museum: June 13 to October 19, 2026

National Gallery of Canada: November 27 to April 18, 2027

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: May 29 to October 10, 2027

Takao Tanabe, Land VII, 1966

Takao Tanabe
Spatial Abstractions

Takao Tanabe, Window, 1967

Takao Tanabe, Strip, 1967

Takao Tanabe, Boxed, 1967

Takao Tanabe
Early Works

Takao Tanabe (b. 1926, Seal Cove, BC) has spent more than seven decades developing a visual language rooted in observation, restraint, and precision. His early studies at the Winnipeg School of Art, followed by formative training in New York, London, and Tokyo, shaped him as a painter fluent in multiple traditions—from Lyrical Abstraction to Japanese calligraphy. This exhibition presents a selection of works dating from 1955 to 1960, drawn from the artist’s personal collection and archive. Created during a pivotal period of experimentation and growth, these works illuminate the foundational years of Tanabe’s practice, offering a rare glimpse into the emergence of his visual language and evolving approach to painting.

For list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com

Takao Tanabe

Equinox Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of works by Takao Tanabe that span almost seven decades and have come directly from the artist’s personal collection. Takao Tanabe is an important figure in Canadian painting and printmaking; this exhibition ranges from geometric abstractions of the 1960s through to his iconic prairie and west coast landscape paintings.

Tanabe has been a leading figure in Canadian art for over sixty years, his artistic career has included over 70 solo exhibitions. Tanabe has received honourary doctorates from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and the University of Lethbridge, the Order of British Columbia (1993), the Order of Canada (1999), the Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Award (2003), and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2013). His work is included in many private and public collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Tate Museum (UK), Cleveland Museum, Edmonton Art Gallery, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Art Gallery of Ontario, Glenbow Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada.

For a list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com 

Takao Tanabe
A Major Exhibition

Takao Tanabe has been a leading figure in Canadian art for over sixty years. Born in 1926 in Seal Cove, British Columbia, Tanabe was interned by the Canadian Government with his family and many other Japanese-Canadians during World War II. The end of the war took the artist further east, to the Winnipeg School of Art, graduating in 1949. He pursued further artistic studies in New York under Hans Hoffman, London, and Japan, where he learned Japanese ink painting (sumi-e) and calligraphy.

Takao Tanabe, The Prairie Hills 2/80, 1980