中谷泰　NAKATANI Tai

Étretat in the Normandy region of France is also famous for having its coastline painted multiple times by Monet. Nearby is Le Havre, the hometown of Dufy, making it a sacred place for painters since the Impressionist era. During his European trip in the mid-1960s, Yasu Nakatani created many sketches and simultaneously took photographs, which later served as the basis for numerous oil paintings he produced after returning to Japan. While Impressionist painters captured the resonance of light on this land, Nakatani’s expression, perhaps because it was not created on site, conveys a warmth reminiscent of the glow of life, rather than light itself.