Andrew Chinn

Andrew Chinn (1915 - 1996) was a Chinese-American artist and art educator, active in the Pacific Northwest from the early 1930s through the 1990s. He is known for his distinctive style of watercolor painting and printmaking, and is associated with the Northwest's Asian-American arts community, the WPA artists of the Great Depression/World War II era, and, peripherally, the Northwest School of painters.

Andrew Nan Chinn's parents emigrated from Toyshan, Canton (modern Taishan, Guangdong), China, to the United States in about 1910. He was born in Seattle, Washington, on June 17, 1915. After his mother died of influenza in 1918, he and his older sister Ann returned to Toyshan, where, with the encouragement of his grandfather, he learned traditional calligraphy. He also became interested in painting, which, in China of the Sun Yat Sen era, was beginning to show the influence of modern European trends.

Chinn returned to the US in 1927, went back to China in 1929, and then moved to Seattle for good in 1933. He attended Broadway High School, where his classmates included artists Fay Chong, George Tsutakawa, and Morris Graves. He, Chong, and other young artist friends formed the Chinese Art Club, holding monthly shows at a shared studio in Seattle's International District. Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and William Cumming - future members of the acclaimed 'Northwest School' of painters - were frequent guests.

In 1939 Chinn enrolled in the University of Washington, where he studied art under Walter Isaacs, Ambrose Patterson, Ray Hill, and others. While a student he had paintings accepted for juried shows at both the Seattle Art Museum and the Frye Museum.

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