Portrait of a Girl

A young girl is rendered in this portrait with the direct, frontal gaze that Kitaoka brought to his figurative subjects. Dated to the 20th century (catalogued as c. 1940), the portrait belongs to his early period, before his mature abstract landscape style was fully developed. The girl's face is treated with more naturalistic modulation than his later figures, reflecting his still-developing formal vocabulary. Yet the essential directness is already present: this is a person looked at honestly, without sentimentality or idealization.