Yasuo Kuniyoshi
1889-1953

Yasuo Kuniyoshi was born in Okayama, Japan in 1889, and at the age of 17 immigrated to the United States in search of his life’s calling.  He lived briefly in Seattle and then Los Angeles, where he took his first art courses and decided to embark upon a career as an artist.  This decision necessitated his move to New York in 1910 where he took a course with Robert Henri at the National Academy of Design; he then enrolled for a brief period at the Independent School, and finally, from 1916-1920, attended the Art Students League.  There he studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller who played a key role in Kuniyoshi’s developing aesthetic.  In 1925, Kuniyoshi traveled to Europe and spent most of the time in Paris and Venice.  By 1927 he was back in this country, living in Woodstock, New York.

Kuniyoshi received his first solo exhibition at the Daniel Gallery in New York in 1922.   Clearly the exhibition earned him acclaim because his work was included in one of the Museum of Modern Art’s first exhibitions, “Nineteen Living Americans,” held in 1929.  Other notable indications of his esteemed reputation as an American painter were his 1948 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and, four years later, his selection to serve as one of four artists representing the United States at the Venice Biennale.  (The other three choices were: Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper.)