Edutainment > Chiura Obata 1885-1975

Landscape - 1930

After 1945 quite a few Japanese artists settled permanently in the United States like Masami Teraoka or Tadashi Asoma. Chiura Obata was the first to live and work in the US. It was not always easy for him. When Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals from the West coast were put into detention camps in 1942, he was among them.

Ink Painting

Chiura was born in Sendai in Okuyama Prefecture. He was adopted by his uncle, an artist. As a child he was trained in ink painting. And when Chiura was 14 years old, he was apprenticed to the painter Murata Tanryo in Tokyo.

Chiura Obata in California

Chiura Obata came to California in 1903 and decided to stay. Far away from his homeland, his problem was to keep in contact with the Japanese art scene and with galleries in Japan. He earned his living in California as illustrator for different newspapers and as commercial designer. During this period his favorite subjects were Californian mountain landscapes. In 1927 he visited Yosemite park and the Sierra Nevada - painting and making sketches. Obata stayed in the USA until the death of his father in 1928.

Between 1928 and 1932 he worked in Tokyo as a painter and transformed his California landscape watercolors and sketches into a portfolio of 35 woodblock prints titled World Landscape Series - America. The prints were published by Takamizawa, Tokyo, as a limited edition of hundred.

The woodblock prints by Obata Chiura remind of watercolors. The artist preferred luminous colors. Landscapes are often depicted with dramatic skies achieved with bold light and color effects.

In 1932 Obata Chiura returned to the US. He had received a post as an art instructor at the renowned University of California, Berkeley.

Relocation Camp 1942-1945

Evening Glow at Yosemite Falls
1930

In 1942 Obata Chiura and his wife Haruko were among the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were moved from their homes at the West coast into ten relocation camps. During his internment in different camps, the artist made about hundred sketches and paintings until his release in 1945. The book Topaz Moon, edited by his granddaughter Kimi Kodani Hill, is a documentation of his detention period and the works of art that he created during this time.

During his confinement at Topaz in Utah, he organized an art school for the 8,000 Japanese Americans in Topaz. The Topaz Art School had over 600 students with 16 art instructors.

Back at Berkeley University

After 1945, Obata Chiura could continue his former post as an art teacher at California University. He stayed there until his retirement in 1954. Afterwards he continued to paint, sketch and to travel through the American countryside. In 1965 he received an order from the Japanese Emperor for promoting cultural exchange between the United States and Japan.

Chiura Obata died at the age of 90. From September 23 until December 31, 2000 the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco held a retrospective of 100 ink and brush paintings, large scrolls and color woodblock prints.

Literature sources used for this Chiura Obata biography:

• Amy Reigle Stephens, "The New Wave - Twentieth Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection", Bamboo Publishing Ltd. London and Hotei - Japanese Prints, Leiden, ISBN 1-870076-19-2
• Kimi Kodani Hill, "Topaz Moon - Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment", - ISBN 1-8901771-26-0

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