Chiura Obata

Obata was born in 1885 in Okayama prefecture in Japan. He was the youngest of a very large family. At the age of five, he showed a natural inclination for drawing. He was then adopted by his older brother, Rokuichi, Shortly after he finished his apprenticeship, he received a prestigious art award in Tokyo. == Early career ==

In 1903, Obata left for the United States. He arrived in Seattle, where he planned to study American art before continuing to Paris to study European art. When he got to San Francisco, he found work as a domestic servant in a household, with the pay of $1.50 per week plus room and board. In 1909 he worked in the hops fields in the Sacramento Valley. From 1915 to 1917 Obata was an illustrator and cover page designer for the magazine Japan, published for the Toyo Kisen Kaisha Steamship Co., during which time he turned out about 3000 illustrations and numerous cover designs. during the summer of 1927 on a sketching tour of Yosemite and the Sierra high country, producing over 100 new sketches and ink paintings in six weeks. The first exhibition Obata had for American audiences was in the following year, 1928. == Initial successes ==

In 1928, after his father's death, Obata returned to Japan. There, in 1930, he supervised the production of 35 colored woodblock prints of California landscapes for his "World Landscape Series", the majority of which are views of Yosemite National Park in California. Published in limited editions of 100 by the Takamizawa Print Works in Japan, the prints were exhibited at the Eighty-Seventh Annual Exhibition at Ueno Park in Tokyo in 1930, where his painting of Lake Basin in the High Sierra won first prize. He left Tokyo shortly thereafter. Beginning in 1930, Obata had many very successful exhibitions in California. One, in 1931 at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, was a large exhibit of both his work and the work of his brother, Rokuichi. In 1932 Obata was appointed as an instructor in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Between 1930 and 1941, one-man exhibitions of his work were held in numerous locations. == World War II ==

, Lily, Haruko, Prof. Obata. Obata and his wife Haruko ran an art supply store at 2525 Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, from which his wife offered lessons in ikebana. The shop was shot at after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, and eventually the Obatas were forced to close it and cancel all classes. Executive Order 9066 led to Obata organizing a large sale of his many paintings and woodblock prints. Their curriculum was comprehensive, offering 95 classes each week in 25 subjects. Camp administrators were supportive, seeing art as a constructive way to occupy detainees' time, and Obata and his colleagues were eventually allowed to order supplies from Sears Roebuck catalogs or purchase them in town. During his internment, Obata made about one hundred sketches, paintings, and prints, using whatever materials were available—even making relief prints on surplus linoleum. As director of the art school, Obata had worked closely with the intern camp administration. In the spring of 1943 tensions ran high at the camp, because of the signing of controversial loyalty oaths. Obata, who had been deemed 'loyal' and granted the privileges of leaving camp to teach classes at nearby universities and churches, was assaulted one night leaving the showers by a fellow inmate who considered him a spy. (Obata would later remark that he pitied his attacker for engaging in such violence that "will not better his life.") After two weeks' recovery in the camp hospital, he was immediately released from camp for his own safety. Obata moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri, where Gyo, one of his sons, was going to architecture school. Obata found employment there with a commercial art company. When Chiura Obata painted New Moon Over Topaz, Utah, he was a prisoner at the camp: one of 120,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated during World War II. The painting shows a dreamy moonlit desert, with just a few dark lines to hint at the barbed wire fences and guard towers that held him and his family captive. As a painter, Obata turned again and again to Nature as his greatest teacher, and his greatest subject. Today, his work can be found in art collections and museums around the world, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. == Post-war career ==

In 1945, when the military exclusion ban was lifted, Obata was reinstated as an instructor at UC Berkeley. In 1949 he was promoted to associate professor of art. In 1950, he and his wife moved out of the attic apartment of a friend, purchasing a house in the Elmwood district in Berkeley, where they had lived before the war. In 1954 he became a naturalized citizen. Obata played a pivotal role in introducing Japanese art techniques and aesthetics to other artists in California. These techniques and aesthetics became one of the distinctive characteristics of the California Watercolor School. == After retirement ==

In 1954, Chiura and Haruko Obata led the first of the "Obata Tours" to Japan, to see Japanese gardens and Japanese art. He died in 1975, aged 89. Posthumous exhibitions of Obata's works have been organized at the Oakland Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, and, in 2000, at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, a retrospective of 100 ink and brush paintings, large scrolls and color woodblock prints. The museum collection at Yosemite National Park contains several Obata prints of the park. The Smithsonian American Art Museum organized an exhibition of Obata's Yosemite woodblock prints, which was shown at the American Art Museum in Washington, DC in early 2008 and then traveled to the Wichita Falls Museum, Wichita, TX (2008) == Personal life ==

In 1912, Obata married Haruko Kohashi (1892–1989). She was one of the first teachers of ikebana in the San Francisco Bay Area. She had an exhibition of her arrangements in 1913 at San Francisco's 75th Diamond Jubilee Celebration, and in 1915 she exhibited at the Panama Pacific Exposition, beginning a career as a teacher of that art. Their first child, a daughter, was named Fujiko. Their second child, a son, was named Kim; the third, also a son, was named Gyo. Their last was a daughter, Yuri. Haruko's last public demonstration was in Golden Gate Park when she was 93 years old. Notable offspring Their son Gyo Obata became one of the founding partners of the global architecture-engineering giant HOK, responsible for the Apple campus in Cupertino, California, American Airlines Arena in Miami, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the BBC's 2013 headquarters. == Exhibitions ==

June 26October 17, 1999: Great Nature: The Transcendent Landscapes of Chiura Obata, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. October 25, 2008January 18, 2009: Asian | American | Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970. de Young Museum, San Francisco. January 13April 29, 2018: Chiura Obata: An American Modern, Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara. May 25September 2, 2018: Chiura Obata: An American Modern, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. November 27, 2019May 25, 2020: Chiura Obata: American Modern, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. == Memorial highway ==

In 2020, the California legislature designated a section of California State Route 120 in Mono County as the "Chiura Obata Great Nature Memorial Highway". This section of the highway begins near the Tioga Pass Entrance Station at the elevation of 9,943 feet on the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and runs east through rugged mountain terrain toward Lee Vining, California. Signs designating the memorial highway were installed in 2021. == References ==