In 1936, when she was twenty-three years old, Ohtake traveled to Brazil to visit a brother but could not return to Japan due to the Pacific Theater of World War II occurring there.

[4] After many years of taking care of her family and household, at the age of 39 Ohtake attended an exhibition of the artist Keya Sugano at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art and soon began producing genre and landscape paintings under his tutelage.

[2] The Instituto Tomie Ohtake was opened in 2001 in São Paulo as a non-profit museum showcasing the artist's works as well as local and international exhibitions celebrating contemporary architecture and visual culture.

Designed by her son and architect Ruy Ohtake, other events surrounding art education, cinema, theatre and literature have since been added to the organisation' s public programme.

[14] In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.