Art: Back to Paris

Tsuguji Foujita’s whisker-fine brush drawings had always gone over big in the West, and he was homesick for Montparnasse. Last week, in the Tokyo suburb of Itabashi-ku, he was waiting impatiently for occupation authorities to O.K. his return to Paris.

Meanwhile, he had shipped a sheaf of work (including two six-panel painted screens) westward to raise funds. On exhibition in a Manhattan gallery this week, the new drawings were up to Foujita’s lively scratch. The ink still seemed to spit, hiss and whisper off the tip of his brush. Best of the easel paintings was a monochromatic Mermaid, which he painted as a portrait of his fifth wife, Kimio, just before quitting Paris in 1940.

The war years, which Foujita spent painting hack combat pictures for the Japanese Government (at $33.76 a month), had turned his grey bangs a snowy white. The 60-year-old Bohemian had long since given up his bare chest effects and discarded his leopard-skin pants and silk topper; nowadays he lounges about in grey flannels and carpet slippers. But Foujita still smokes a collegiate pipe and wears startled-looking Harold Lloyd glasses, and he can still put furry cats and purry females on paper.