Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Johns, Barbara, 1942-

Publication

• Edmonds, WA : Cascadia Art Museum, [2021]
• ©2021

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Martin, David F. (David Francis), 1953-
• Nomura, Gail M.
• Cascadia Art Museum, host institution.

Description

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

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.

Subject

• Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956 > Exhibitions
• Nomura, Kenjiro, 1896-1956 > Criticism and interpretation
• Modernism (Art) > United States > Exhibitions
• Japanese American painting > 20th century > Exhibitions
• Japanese American art
• Japanese American painters
• Painters
• United States
• Washington (State)

Genre/Form

Exhibition catalogs.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (159-163) and index.

Exhibitions (note)

• "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.

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.

Call Number

JQF 21-1648

ISBN

• 9780998911236
• 0998911232

LCCN

2021913181

OCLC

1285722487

Author

Johns, Barbara, 1942- author.

Title

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

Publisher

Edmonds, WA : Cascadia Art Museum, [2021]

Copyright Date

©2021

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (159-163) and index.

Exhibitions

"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.

Added Author

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

Nomura, Gail M., writer of foreword.

Cascadia Art Museum, host institution.

Research Call Number

JQF 21-1648