“toshiko takaezu: worlds within” touches down at the chazen museum of art
“Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” is on display at the Chazen Museum of Art through Dec. 23.
The installation features nearly 100 artworks dating from the 1950s until the artist’s death in 2011, including Takaezu’s iconic large-scale ceramics.
The exhibition marks the first nationally touring retrospective of the artist’s work in more than 20 years, giving visitors the opportunity to trace the range of innovative abstract work Takaezu produced during the last six decades of her life.
Born in Pepeekeo, Hawaii to a family of Japanese immigrants, Takaezu spent the first 25 years of her career honing her craft in academic settings, according to biographical materials. In 1948, she shifted from commercial pottery to studying ceramics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. After three years, Takaezu committed to pursuing a career in art, traveling to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan to learn from artist and teacher Maija Grotell.
“Hawaii was where I learned technique,” Takaezu stated. “Cranbrook was where I found myself.”
The artist went on to teach summer sessions at Cranbrook from 1954 to 1956, at the invitation of Grotell, according to her biography. Later Takaezu held positions at University of Wisconsin, Madison (1954-55), Cleveland Institute of Art (1955-64), and Princeton University (1967-92).
Takaezu’s first teaching role at UW-Madison was a meaningful time in her early career, making the Isthmus a crucial stop for the touring retrospective, Chief Curator of Art at the Chazen Museum Katherine Alcauskas told me.
“The show has already made its way to a number of institutions closely tied to her life and legacy,” said Alcauskas, “Madison, however, holds a special place in her story, and the organizers recognized its importance. That personal connection gave the Chazen Museum a unique opportunity — not just to host the exhibition, but to enrich it.”
“Worlds Within,” the largest retrospective devoted to the artist’s work, fills two rooms of the Chazen’s first floor. By winding their way through the large pieces and taking a closer look at more unassuming elements, “Worlds Within” stands strong, highlighting the artist’s iconic “closed form” ceramics, which can be seen as rounded abstract paintings, capturing viewers’ attention through rich texture, pattern and glaze, critics note.
Takaezu’s work holds a deep reverence for nature, according to art historians. One of 11 children, she was raised in a traditional Japanese household surrounded by the Hawaiian landscape, which led to a deep connection to the natural atmosphere in her art, her biography notes.
Five pieces of the artist’s “Star Series,” center the installation, made up of human-scale ceramic pieces, almost taller than the artist herself, museum materials note. Completed between 1994 and 2001, the closed forms hold physical variation with fissures or cracks while others’ deep colored glazes make them seem like they hold dynamic weather systems inside their hollow bases.
“Visitors are invited to walk among them, experiencing their scale and presence up close,” Alcauskas told me. “When I first saw them installed this way at the Noguchi Museum, I was struck by the physicality of the encounter. There’s a dynamic energy in moving through the space, surrounded by these monumental works. We’re proud to be the only other venue on the tour offering this immersive installation.”
Beyond large form ceramics, “Worlds Within” showcases the artist’s acrylic canvas and textile pieces. Rich dark colors blend into one another in Takaezu’s acrylic on canvas paintings, which accent and sometimes coordinate with nearby abstract ceramics. Draping weavings of yarn and plant fibers shield smaller ceramics from the ground, and in one corner hold up round pottery, “moons” like a child in a sling.
Worlds Within has been well received by guests who visit the Chazen, Alcauskas said, describing how visitors gasped when they first entered the galleries.
“It was a spontaneous, audible reaction that spoke volumes about the impact of Toshiko Takaezu’s work,” she said. “There’s a palpable sense of awe that fills the space — not just because of the individual beauty of each piece, but because of the quiet power they hold when experienced together. The arrangement creates a kind of visual harmony that invites reflection, wonder and connection.”
Takaezu’s work is alive in the Chazen Museum of Art. “Worlds Within” highlights the artist’s career of more than 60 years, exemplifying her commitment to her work having an “unsaid quality” a feeling of life that cannot be pinpointed.
“You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used.” Toshiko Takaezu told Ceramics Monthly in 1975.
“When an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it contains a spirit and is alive. There’s a nebulous feeling in the piece that cannot be pinpointed in words. That to me is good work!””Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” was organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family. It was available for visitors to view at the Chazen Museum of Art until Dec. 23.