Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Kuniyoshi worked between 1893 and 1953 across painter, photographer, draftsperson, printmaker and printer. The registers place that work in portrait and still life. This article rests on 48 catalogued photographs and 19 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi studied at Art Students League of New York and National Academy of Design. Frances Baldwin and Beatien Yazz are recorded as having studied under Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The recorded working language is Japanese. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait and still life. Places of work recorded in the authority are New York City, Ogunquit and Woodstock. Employment is recorded with United States Office of War Information. Works named in the authority record are Girl on Sofa and ACA Galleries. Work by Yasuo Kuniyoshi is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Yasuo Kuniyoshi • Born — 1 September 1889 • Birthplace — Okayama, Japan • Died — 14 May 1953 • Place of death — New York City, US • Field — Painting, intaglio printmaking, lithography • Training — Los Angeles School of Art and Design, Art Students League of New York • Awards — Guggenheim Fellowship

Kuniyoshi was born on September 1, 1889, in Okayama, Japan. He immigrated to the United States in 1906 at 17, choosing not to attend military school in Japan. Kuniyoshi originally intended to study English and return to Japan to work as a translator. He spent some time in Seattle, before enrolling at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design. Kuniyoshi spent three years in Los Angeles, discovering his love for the arts. He then moved to New York City to pursue an art career. Kuniyoshi studied briefly at the National Academy and later at the Independent School of Art in New York City, and then studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League of New York. He later taught at the Art Students League of New York in New York City and in Woodstock, New York. Nan Lurie was among his students, as was Irene Krugman and Faith Ringgold. Around 1930, the artist built a home and studio on Ohayo Mountain Road in Woodstock. He was an active member of the artistic community there for the rest of his life. One of his pupils from the League, Anne Helioff, would go on to work with him at Woodstock. Kuniyoshi was awarded the Temple Gold Medal in 1934 from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. In 1935, Kuniyoshi was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. He was also an Honorary member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and first president of Artists Equity Association, now known as New York Artists Equity Association. In 1948, Kuniyoshi became the first living artist chosen to have a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work may also be found in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Kuniyoshi also exhibited at the 1952 Venice Biennale.

• Illustration — Kuniyoshi working on his painting Upside Down Table and Mask in his studio near Union Square at 30 East Fourteenth Street in New York City Kuniyoshi was also known for his still-life paintings of common objects, and figurative subjects like female circus performers and nudes. Throughout Kuniyoshi's career he had frequent changes in his technique and subject matter. In the 1920s, Kuniyoshi painted images that were more angular, somewhat Cubist in style and with a tilted plane that allowed him to paint the most detail for each object in his paintings. Kuniyoshi's application of Cubism's angularity can be seen in his painting titled Little Joe with Cow (1923). In these early paintings, Kuniyoshi was painting from a combination of his memory and imagination, which is a Japanese mode of thinking about painting. Instead of painting from life, as in Western painting, traditional Japanese painters typically paint their ideal image of a particular subject. Kuniyoshi combined this with Western painting in the way he applies the bold colors in oil on canvas; in Japan, traditional painters use ink on either silk or rice paper. These early paintings are the precursors to his mature style that we see in the 1930s. In 1925, Kuniyoshi painted his Circus Girl Resting, after a visit to Paris. He painted a provocative woman of larger proportions, similar to Strong Woman and Child. This painting was purchased and included in the Advancing American Art Exhibition by the US Department of State alongside other well-known modern artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper. Due to that era's aversion to modern art, the exhibition was closed down. Kuniyoshi's Circus Girl Resting received harsh criticism from President Harry Truman because of its exotic proportions, not because of its provocative nature. In the 1930s Kuniyoshi switched from painting from memory to painting from life. This change occurred after his two trips to Europe in 1925 and 1928, where he was exposed to French modern art. In 1928, Goodrich notes, Kuniyoshi spent most of his time in Paris with his friend Jules Pascin, and it was on this later trip that Kuniyoshi realized that his art had grown stale. By switching to painting from life and incorporating perspective into his paintings, he was able to breathe life back into his images; the change in his style can be seen in Daily News (1935). In this painting it appears that the woman, who is seated in a chair, occupies space within the room depicted as opposed to appearing flat as in Little Joe with Cow. The sharp angles in the cow painting are gone in his painting of the woman, but the soft line work and bold use of colors are apparent in both images. His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics. Kuniyoshi's "Artificial Flowers and Other Things" appeared in the Whitney Museum's "Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting," which ran from November 27, 1934, to January 10, 1935, and included the work of one other Japanese-American artist, Hideo Noda. Even in his images of women where they are full-bodied and seem to have a presence in the painting, such as the woman in Daily News, Kuniyoshi did not entirely throw out painting from memory. Goodrich points out that Kuniyoshi did not work with models for the entire painting process. Rather, the artist drew from the model in the early stages of a painting but eventually stopped using her after about a week or so, and then would continue on from his memory, making adjustments as he saw fit. This desire to paint the ideal perfection of a subject was favored in Japanese art, whereas in Western traditions the painting is typically informed by the real object throughout the entire painting process.

He married his first wife Katherine Schmidt, who in 1919 lost her American citizenship due to her relationship with Kuniyoshi who was ineligible for American citizenship. They divorced in 1932. He later married Sara Mazo in 1935. Although viewed as an immigrant, Kuniyoshi was very patriotic and identified himself as an American. He never received his citizenship due to harsh immigration laws. During World War II, he proclaimed his loyalty and patriotism as a propaganda artist for the United States. This included a number of anti-Japanese propaganda posters.

In the early 1950s, Kuniyoshi contracted cancer, and ended his art career with a series of black-and-white drawings using sumi-e ink. He died on May 14, 1953, aged 63 and is interred at the Woodstock Artists Cemetery in Woodstock, New York.

• Illustration — Maine Family (1922), The Phillips Collection • Illustration — Dream (1922), Artizon Museum • Illustration — Little Joe with the Cow (1923) • Illustration — Strong Woman and Child (1925), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Yasuo Kuniyoshi was born on 1 January 1893 in Okayama. Kuniyoshi held the nationality of Japan and United States. Kuniyoshi was educated at Art Students League of New York and National Academy of Design. Married to: Katherine Schmidt. Kuniyoshi worked as painter, photographer, draftsperson and printmaker, and the authority record catalogues a further 1 occupations under the same name, among them printer. Kuniyoshi worked in New York City, Ogunquit, Woodstock and Los Angeles. Kuniyoshi was employed by United States Office of War Information. The fields Kuniyoshi worked in include portrait and still life. Kuniyoshi worked in Japanese. Kuniyoshi is placed by the collections within Catalan modernism. Kuniyoshi died on 1 January 1953 in New York City. Kuniyoshi is buried at Mount Evergreen Cemetery.