Chiura Obata: A story of resilience, a passion for Yosemite

Deaths Grave, Chiura Obata (18851975), Deaths Grave Pass and Tenaya Peak, High Sierra, USA, 1930, Color woodcut, Private collection

When Kimi Hill was in her teens, just turning the corner on self-absorption and curious about her familys history, her aging grandfather, artist/educator Chiura Obata, resorted to communicating exclusively in his native Japanese, a language she didnt speak.

Cut off from Chiura Obata, the then 20-year-old Berkeley resident had little idea of the important role he played in art history, and particularly in the history of Japanese Americans in the Bay Area. Fortunately, Hill became the primary caretaker of her grandmother, Haruko Obata, for the nine years after Obata died in 1975.

Gradually, Hill got to know her grandfather through her grandmothers stories and through his paintings, drawings, photographs, letters and documents. Seeking ever more intimate insights, she visited abstract connections: the memories of people who were strangers to her but had known her grandfather; reference materials in libraries and archives relating to his years as a respected, influential professor of art at UC Berkeley. She found the most profound answers and clues to her grandfathers legacy in the beauty of natural settings Obata had cherished, like Yosemite National Park.

An exhibit, Yosemite: A Storied Landscape, running now through Jan. 25, 2015, at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, offers Bay Area residents the same opportunity.

Struggle,Chiura Obata (18851975), Struggle, Trail to Johnson Peak, High Sierra, California, 1930, Color woodcut, Private collection

Alongside Yosemite stories, and reflections from more than20artists, historians, scholars, ecologists, naturalists and more, a small collection of watercolor paintings, woodblock prints, photographs and artifacts open a window on the intriguing life of Obata.

Obata traveled to the United States and San Francisco in 1903, leaving Sendai, Japan, where hed spent most of his early years. Trained in sumi-e (ink) brush painting, the brash, talented 18-year-old had no intention of immigrating: America was merely a pitstop on his way to Paris salons, the hotbed of artistic creativity at the time.

Temporarily made homeless by the 1906 earthquake, Obata continued as he always had: drawing and painting in a city refugee encampment eyes wide open for the next piece of art he might create. Meeting Haruko, a skilled ikebana (flower arrangement) artist, dreams of Paris were abandoned. The Obatas began a family and established roots in Japantowns local art community.

California in the early 20th century offered an odd embrace to Japanese immigrants: holding them at arms length with national legislation like the 1924 Asian Exclusion Act, prohibiting them from becoming American citizens and simultaneously, at least in San Francisco, mesmerized by, and adoring of, decorative Japanese art. Obata received a number of significant commissions (creating sets for San Francisco Operas production of Puccinis Madama Butterfly beingjust one example) and participating in group shows as part of the East West Art Society, an artists association he helped found.

See original here:
Chiura Obata: A story of resilience, a passion for Yosemite