Matsumi Kanemitsu (Japanese-American 1922-1992)

Born to Japanese parents in Ogden, Utah in 1922. Kanemitsu was raised in a suburb of Hiroshima, Japan, until he was eighteen. He came alone to the United States in 1940 to pursue a higher education and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1941, giving up his dual citizenship. However, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he was arrested and sent to a series of army detention camps. In the post-war years Kanemitsu moved to the East Coast, first studying sculpture with Karl Metzler in Baltimore before moving to New York. In New York, he attended the Art Students League under the instruction of teachers such as Harry Sternberg and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Kuniyoshi, and later Ad Reinhardt, were influential mentors. In 12961 he earned a Ford Foundation grant to work at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles and readily translated the techniques of simi painting into lithography. He taught at the Chouinard Art School from 1965 to 1970 and at the Otis Art Institute from 1971 to 1983, both in Los Angeles. 

Kanemitsu was proficient in four separate mediums: sumi (Japanese ink drawing), watercolor, lithography, and painting on canvas. He painted with acrylics and used a complex technique that involved brushing, staining, pouring, and glazing to achieve abstract imagery that often reflected landscapes and the forces of nature. He worked all of his life with Japanese sumi ink and brushes, maintaining that the dramatic effects of color painting could also be achieved in black and white and the gradations between them. Y.H. 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: 


1950 Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. 
1954 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn. 
1956 Recent Drawings ,USA, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1957 New School for Social Research, New York
1962 14 Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1971 Black and White Drawing and Watercolors, San Fransisco
Museum of Modern Art
1972 Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
1986 Japanese Artists Who Studied in U.S.A., 1875-1960, 
Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art
1988 Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles
1990 Yamaki Art Gallery, Osaka. 


SELECTED COLLECTIONS: 

Baltimore Museum of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 
Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art
Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art
Honolulu Academy of Arts
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Philadelphia Museum of Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Brown, Michael D. Views from Asian California 1920-1965, An Illustrated History
(San Francisco: Michael D. Brown, 1992) 
Matsumi Kanemitsu Lithographs 1961-1990 (Osaka: Yamaki Art Gallery, 1990) 
Matsumi Kanemitsu, Works in Black and White, 1958-1988) 
(Los Angeles: Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, 1988) 
Nordland, Gerald. Matsumi Kanemitsu (1922-1992) A Retrospective
(Beverly Hills Louis Newman Galleries, 1993) 
Uyemura, Nancy. Portrait of an Artist, Tozai Times 5, issue 51
(December 1988): 1, 10