The Complete Works of Toshiko Okanoue

Okanoue Toshiko Zensakuhin (岡上淑子全作品) is the definitive catalogue raisonne of Toshiko Okanoue, the elusive Japanese photomontage artist whose brief, singular body of work reshaped postwar Japanese surrealism.

Published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in January 2018 as the official catalogue for Okanoue's first major retrospective, "A Long Journey," at the Museum of Art, Kochi, this B5 hardcover assembles all 150 works known to survive: 128 collages and 22 photographs, cut from discarded Allied-occupation-era LIFE and Vogue magazines into uncanny, theatrical tableaux. It includes a complete work list, an inventory of lost pieces, the artist's own writings, a chronology, exhibition history, and an essay by art historian Hiroko Ikegami.

Okanoue (b. 1928, Kochi) studied design at Bunka Gakuin and, over roughly seven years in the 1950s, made collages largely in isolation. Discovered by surrealist critic Shuzo Takiguchi, she exhibited at Takemiya Gallery alongside the VOU poetry circle before marriage led her to set the work aside for four decades. Rediscovered in the late 1990s by historian Ryuichi Kaneko, she now has work held by MoMA, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and M+ Hong Kong.