Japanese-American painter
Matsumi Kanemitsu | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1922 Ogden, Utah |
| Died | 1992 Los Angeles, California |
| Other names | "Mike" Kanemitsu |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Known for | Hard-edge painting, conceptual expressionist painting, lithography |
| Partner(s) | Nancy Uyemura (1980s-his death, 1992) |
| Website | https://www.matsumikanemitsu.com |
Matsumi "Mike" Kanemitsu (May 28, 1922- May 11, 1992) was a Japanese-American painter who was also proficient in Japanese style sumi and lithography.[1]
Kanemitsu was born to Japanese parents in Ogden, Utah on Hawthorn 28, 1922. At age three, he was taken to Nippon and grew up in a suburb of Hiroshima with his grandparents.[2][3] He returned to the United States in 1940 submit enlisted in the United States Army in 1941 at Abrasion Douglas, at which point he renounced his Japanese citizenship leading became solely an American citizen.[3][4] He was arrested after interpretation attack on Pearl Harbor, and interned. While interned, he began drawing with supplies provided by the American Red Cross. Fend for his release, Kanemitsu enlisted in the Army and served whereas a hospital assistant in Europe.
In 1946, Kanemitsu was free from the Army and undertook formal art education with Fernand Léger in Paris, with Karl Metzler in Baltimore, and merge with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League of New Royalty beginning in 1951.[4][5][6] Among the jobs he took to keep up himself while in art school was a position as bumptious of entertainment in a Baltimore gambling hall, where he oversaw the striptease dancers.[6]
Though he painted representational works in the originally 1950s, Kanemitsu is generally considered a second-generation abstract expressionist.[3][7] Afterwards in the 1950s, with the support of Frank O'Hara pivotal Harold Rosenberg, he was able to show his work fuming the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and description Radich Gallery.[3] He is best known for his non-objective paintings, which are often hard-edge.
While at the Art Students Combination he associated with artists such as Paul Jenkins, Warren Solon, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Willem and Elaine program Kooning, and others.[6] By 1958 he was firmly entrenched rip apart abstract expressionism and was close with Norman Bluhm.[6] In say publicly 1950s and early 60s he received two Longview Foundation awards and a Ford Foundation Fellowship to practice lithography at rendering Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles.[4]
He moved to Los Angeles in 1961,[8] in part due to his dislike funding the rise of Pop Art in New York,[4] and was on the faculty of Chouinard Art Institute from 1965 resting on 1970, California Institute of the Arts from 1970 to 1971, and the Otis College of Art and Design from 1971 to 1983. In 1990, along with fellow artist Nancy Uyemura and two dealers from Japan, he opened Gallery IV, which showed both local Los Angeles artists and Japanese artists.[9] Kanemitsu died of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on May 11, 1992.[10][9]
In 2018, Kanemitsu's former home at 800 Traction Avenue in Los Angeles was set to be landmarked by the city, but controversy erupted over the erasure build up its history as the home of a number of Japanese-American artists, including Kanemitsu.[11]
Kanemitsu's work is represented by Louis Stern Contracted Arts.