Overview of Campo de Criptana
Campo de Criptana is a town in the province of Ciudad Real, in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, world-famous for the windmills crowning its ridge — the setting for the most universal episode of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.
Since 1973, the painter Takuma Tokunaga — later joined by his partner Yukiko — has returned to this town every summer to paint its windmills, streets, and landscape, weaving a bond that now spans more than four decades. Below are four texts, written on the occasion of various exhibitions held in Campo de Criptana (including one at the Museo "El Pósito" in 2017), that bear witness to that relationship.
01
The Mayor’s Welcome to the Exhibition
The universality of the world of arts is clearly demonstrated in the exhibition of Takuma Tokunaga and Yukiko Nogami, a Japanese married couple who may well be considered adoptive children of this Land of Giants.
These artists have made Campo de Criptana their second home, visiting us every summer since the 1970s and making our landscapes the protagonists of their works.
In this way, our town has been present in important exhibitions by these painters in Japan, making them deserving of the title of ambassadors in Japanese lands, because through their works they have made known the beauty and imprint of our streets, monuments, and natural sites.
It was only fitting, therefore, to pay tribute to Takuma and Yukiko with the opening of this collection to the public, in which our landscapes merge with those of Japan, transforming the exhibition into an extraordinary display of these painters' art.
There we will discover the sensitivity of both in works full of intimism, created in most cases in the solitude of their getaways to corners that may be unknown even to us.
Seeing our reality through the eyes of artists who have been marveled by our land turns out to be, to say the least, very curious, because they are capable of capturing sensations or perceptions that might pass unnoticed by us.
The power of painting crosses borders, and I am sure that visitors to this exhibition will perfectly capture what its authors were seeking at the moment of their artistic creation.
In this way, the light of the works will leave them dazzled, the realism of the native flora will surprise them by its incredible resemblance to nature, and the snapshots will remain etched in their retina.
Art and feeling of a humble and simple couple who enjoy Campo de Criptana from a perspective different from our own.
An art that travels thousands of kilometers and makes us great in the eyes of millions of people who enjoy our hills and windmills, awakening their interest to visit us and know them in person.
Let us continue, therefore, welcoming with open arms these Japanese artists who have quietly won a place in our hearts.
Their works have been featured in various promotional posters for activities carried out by our associations, thus joining the local tradition and folklore that characterizes us in La Mancha.
These are the people who make our town unique, those who allow us to keep making a difference in the region, and those who universalize our signs of identity simply by being in love with them.
Their friends consider them Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of La Mancha, a title that perfectly fits them because year after year they continue riding to face our windmills and capture a thousand and one details that our daily routine obscures from us.
Thank you for opening our eyes; thank you for loving Campo de Criptana so much.
Enjoy the exhibition.
02
Exhibition Catalog Essay
Takuma arrived in this town forty-four years ago, like so many illustrious travelers following in the footsteps of Don Quixote, and fell to his knees before the landscape of windmills.
He shared friendship with the painter Francisco Valbuena, in the Cuevas de la Pastora Marcela and in the white sanctuary of Las Musas, which crowns the ridge of windmills.
He ended up staying at the inn of Bar de los Molinos, where that lyrical, eternal Carmen, seated on a chair in the square, has always looked at the town, and also from her balcony stage where I would place her sister Alfonsa accompanied by the "Vicentes", father and son—giving life to this town.
Takuma has painted everything, and taken it back to Japan.
When summer ends, he unmounts the canvases from their stretchers with the same veneration with which he unfurled them, rolling them up into the bottom of his suitcase.
They fly thousands of kilometers to Kobe, his origin city—port, cosmopolitan, southwest of Osaka.
There an art warehouse awaits him, where he deposits each fragment of this land like a pilgrim living in a state of grace; this knight of silence, passionate reader and follower of Quixote, who has been coming to Campo de Criptana since 1973 when he discovered the famous windmills and the passionate red of the dry plateau soil contrasting with the intense yellow of the stubble, where summer fades in the suffocating heat and color melts over this landscape.
But Takuma did not come alone; he has been accompanied on up to thirteen occasions by his partner Yukiko, also a painter, who shares the same affection for this land and has brought us for this occasion a splendid collection of our native flora, such as our well-known thistles—a tribute to that singular and simple flower like themselves, which we barely value.
For forty-four summers, Takuma and Yukiko have continued spending their savings on this mystical journey, paying tribute to our town.
They are like medieval monks, with Franciscan fervor, with a humility no longer seen.
They have been our best ambassadors of Campo de Criptana in Japan, and after them, many Japanese people have come and continued visiting us.
Takuma only thinks of fulfilling the dream of seeing all his artwork about Campo de Criptana hanging in a museum in his native Kobe.
There will be a very large piece of Criptana, present thousands of kilometers away, and when that museum he dreams of is built, we will have a sanctuary of this town as the fruit of a friendship, of a hidden love of a Japanese man who came to Spain enamored with the echoes of flamenco reaching him through American cinema, and above all with Quixote, which brought him to the windmills of Campo de Criptana.
Those windmills that spellbound him the day he first discovered them from a train window in the seventies.
A spell that still continues after so many years.
We wish that this exhibition serves as our small tribute to a singular couple, who arrive like summer birds after twelve thousand kilometers of flight, solely to paint our land, our town, and to stay among us for just one month.
03
Takuma Tokunaga, the Samurai of La Mancha
You are not from Criptana if you don't know... if you don't know who Takuma is.
Takuma Tokunaga is our particular samurai of La Mancha.
Another privilege of being born in Campo de Criptana is stumbling upon someone like this spiritual painter of fine brush and meticulous stroke who arrived in our town in 1973 from Kobe, in those days when Franco had not yet died.
Takuma, a Japanese painting professor, unexpectedly transformed the house of Carmen, Vicente, and Alfonsa into his Manchegan pagoda, and he has returned there every summer for 45 years.
Thanks to him, most Criptanenses discovered that Japanese people actually existed, were flesh and blood, and were not evil soldiers in World War II movies.
If we are what we do, Takuma is as he paints: a pure character, all light, whiter than lime, fleeing as if from a cloud of shadows and darkness, capturing landscapes and objects with a life of their own on every canvas.
Takuma, as well as Yukiko, his partner in life and art, stands on tiptoes from his easel so that we may see, through his painting, beyond what we perceive.
I myself discovered a door of the family workshop of Arsenio, my father-in-law, when I saw it reflected by Takuma in a painting.
Don Quixote went out seeking adventures, to redress wrongs and injuries, because he wanted to feel alive.
Our man left Kobe, traveling back and forth between Japan and Spain every year, because he needs the adventure of feeling alive: continuing on and on like a samurai who never surrenders.
Don Quixote suffered from the injustice of others and the surrounding material and spiritual emptiness, and Takuma suffered the consequences of men who believed themselves gods and turned Japan into a realm of destruction.
Like Don Quixote, Takuma needed a dream, and his dream comes alive in his painting.
The paintings of my admired Takuma are the harmony that Buddhists seek with oneself and with others.
That harmony is what anyone who contemplates his work feels.
Takuma, the man who came from the East, is a fortunate being: today he receives the recognition of Campo de Criptana because he, with years of work, has helped us discover what surrounds us.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
Takuma faces the empty canvas every morning with courage and joy.
It is his samurai battle.
Sometimes an earthenware jar appears, other times a pot or a broken door..... His katana is his brush, and his yari—his spear—is a thistle.
Thank you Takuma.
04
Museo "El Pósito" — 45 Years of Takuma Tokunaga (2017)
We do not have many opportunities in Spain and in Campo de Criptana to enjoy the work and above all the drawing production of Takuma Tokunaga and his wife, which is offered to us in this exhibition.
The relationship of these artists with our town has always been very close, although to date largely unknown to many.
Takuma has a long professional career with a painting oriented towards expressionism, painting the landscape of our land, using drawing and oil, seeking light through impression, full of intimacy and sensitivity.
He came to Campo de Criptana 45 years ago and fell in love with our town, and since then he comes every summer to paint it and enjoy our company.
Sometimes he came with his wife and other times alone; the time he stayed was one or two summer months. The first years he always came with gifts for everyone, I loved those gifts he brought. For my mother some Japanese fans, for us then children, some Japanese toy, and for my father, painting material and tobacco, a lot of tobacco. I loved those packs of Japanese tobacco with such beautiful designs.
In the 70s my father had a studio in the Sierra de los Molinos where he set up a small bar to invite his friends to a wine; over time it grew and ended up being a bar (Cueva de Marcela la Pastora). Takuma Tokunaga appeared there, that very thin Japanese man with a ragged appearance who smoked a lot and who, without hardly speaking a word of Spanish, understood my father perfectly. The work and sensitivity of each one united them and they became very great friends. Art united them, something that is transmitted through feeling.
I remember that in those years Takuma came to see my father a lot and they would go together to find corners of Criptana and even paint them together.
Takuma, when he first came to Criptana, settled in the Bar de los Molinos, a small hotel-pension run at that time by Vicente and Carmen. Right away he made himself loved, so much so that in the end he was and is one more of that great family.
I will always remember Takuma alone, looking for corners and walking through the streets of our town to later see him loaded with his easel and his painter's suitcase and start painting those corners for days.
Takuma is a sincere, cheerful, silent person of few words, full of sensitivity, strength and elegance, like his painting.
Now I wanted to say that and more, but may each one enjoy that sincerity by looking, seeing, imagining...
Texts compiled on the occasion of the exhibitions of Takuma and Yukiko Tokunaga.