WILLY SEILER (1903-1997)
Willy Seiler occupies a minor place in the Far Eastern movement, being known only for the abundant series of engravings on Japan of the decade which followed the Second World War and whose buyers were the many Americans who then occupied the country. He nevertheless presents a rare testimony to this period when the Japanese people, defeated, courageously embarked on the reconstruction and modernization of the country while trying to preserve its soul and its traditions.
Born in Dresden in 1903, he did his artistic apprenticeship in Munich then in Paris and decided at the age of 25 to travel the world. A true "globe-trotter", we do not know the complete list of the countries in which he lived (Europe, Middle East, India, Asia, the Americas) and where he subsisted thanks to the sale of his works to the local enthusiasts. Nothing is known of the works produced during this period. Married in the early 1930s, his wife, originally from Dresden, was also an artist and they had, during a first stay in Japan in 1933, a daughter Anita who had been later a quality designer.
It was in 1937 that Willy Seiler finally decided to "land" and settle permanently in Japan where he created an art school. He managed to maintain himself throughout the war until the turn of March 1945 when, like all foreigners living in Tokyo, he was deported to the mountain town of Karuizawa, where he met the French artist Paul Jacoulet. Like the latter, but in a more marked way, the resumption of his artistic creation from 1946 was made possible by the presence of numerous Americans, most of them soldiers, who then occupied the country and appreciated the talent of the few Western artists working locally. Thanks to these outlets, his production of engravings became important and he supplemented his activities by providing drawing lessons to American troops. In 1950, he even created the Willy Seiler Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo.
About 200 engravings created by Willy Seiler have been counted and the vast majority has as their subject the "little people" of Japan and a limited number of Chinese and Koreans. All are on copper, in black and white, but for some, Willy Seiler has also released coloured editions. Each of the works was sold in his workshop in Karuizawa. They were apparently numbered according to the dates of creation which must be spread over ten years following the defeat of 1945, with an indication of the print run which varies from 40 to 200 copies.
He was an excellent engraver, endowed with a social sensitivity allowing him to paint popular circles with complicity. We are far with him from exoticism or from the dominating Japanese empire. Willy Seiler paints with great humanity but also with frank realism a country in pain, defeated and trying to rebuild itself. His main buyers were the American soldiers who found in his drawings the Japan they had in front of them. Paradoxically, this may also partly explain its lack of notoriety in Japan. After three decades in his adopted homeland, Willy Seiler returned to Germany in the mid-1960s and we lose track of him until his presumed death in 1997.
List of works on : http://keepingscore.x10.mx/seiler1-20.html
The collection
