Yasuo Kuniyoshi

1889-1953

Yasuo Kuniyoshi emigrated from Okayama, Japan to the United States in 1906, eventually settling in New York City where he studied at the Art Students League under Kenneth Hayes Miller. He became a painter, printmaker, and photographer known for bold, expressionistic works combining Japanese sensibility with Western technique. In the 1920s, his angular, Cubist-influenced still lifes and circus scenes evolved after travels to Paris; by the 1930s he painted from life with softer forms and spatial depth. Kuniyoshi taught at the Art Students League and was founding president of Artists Equity Association. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and in 1948 became the first living artist given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum. His work entered major collections including MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum. During World War II he created propaganda posters. He died in New York in 1953.