Kenjiro Nomura, American modernist : an Issei artist's journey / Barbara Johns ; foreword by Gail M. Nomura ; contribution by David F. Martin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johns, Barbara, 1942- author.

Contributor:

Martin, David F. (David Francis), 1953- curator.

Nomura, Gail M., writer of foreword.

Cascadia Art Museum, host institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956--Exhibitions.

Nomura, Kenjiro.

Modernism (Art)--United States--Exhibitions.

Modernism (Art).

Japanese American painting.

United States.

Japanese American painting--20th century--Exhibitions.

Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956--Criticism and interpretation.

Local Subjects:

Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956--Exhibitions.

Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956--Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

xi, 171 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 29 cm

Place of Publication:

Edmonds, WA : Cascadia Art Museum, [2021]

Summary:

"Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist's Journey features the Japanese American artist's work throughout his life from his early works focusing on Seattle's urban environment and rural Northwest landscapes, to paintings and drawings capturing his life in World War II internment camps, and post-war abstractions fully demonstrating Nomura's artistic stylistic and professional growth. Born in Japan in 1896, Kenjiro Nomura came to the United States with his parents at the age of ten. On his own by sixteen, painting became a constant throughout his life as he experienced not only major artistic recognition but also business success and failure, racism and wartime incarceration, and, at last, American citizenship. The peak of his artistic success was the 1930s, when his paintings represented the Northwest in New York, Washington, DC, and the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Incarcerated during World War II along with 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, he continued to paint, leaving a record of his experience in more than one hundred paintings and drawings from his time in the Puyallup detention facility and Minidoka confinement camp. Despite crippling challenges after World War II including the suicide of his wife, he resumed painting, developed a new abstract artistic style, and once again gained recognition--the only one of his prewar colleagues to do so. He fulfilled a long-held goal to become a citizen after a federal law barring citizenship to Asian immigrants was voided." -- from Cascadia Art Museum.

Contents:

Foreword / by Gail M. Nomura

Museum foreword / by Lindsey Echelbarger

Introduction

The immigrant

The artist

The wartime prisoner

The new citizen

Bridges to modernism : the art of Kenjiro Nomura / by David F. Martin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (159-163) and index.

Local Notes:

"Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist's Journey is published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, organized by Cascadia Art Musuem and on view from October 22, 2021, to February 22, 2022." -- colophon.

ISBN:

9780998911236

0998911232

OCLC:

1285722487