Kenzo Okada
| Kenzo Okada | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
September 28, 1902 Yokohama, Japan |
| Died | July 25, 1982 (aged 79) Tokyo, Japan |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Abstract expressionist |
Kenzo Okada (岡田 謙三 "Okada Kenzō" September 28, 1902 – July 25, 1982) was a Japanese-born American painter and the first Japanese-American artist to work in the abstract expressionist style and receive international acclaim.
According to Michelle Stuart, “when Okada came to the United States he was already a mature painter, well considered in his native Japan. To American abstraction Okada brought civilized restraint, an elegance of device and an unusual gift for poetic transmutation of natural forms.”
Kenzo Okada was born September 28, 1902 in Yokohama, Japan. His father, a wealthy industrialist, did not support his son's desire to be an artist. When his father died, Okada entered the department of Western painting at Tokyo School of Fine Arts, called today Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, but in 1924 left for France where he studied with fellow Japanese expatriate Tsugouharu Foujita, executing paintings of urban subjects. In 1927, he exhibited work in the Salon d'Automne. In the same year, he returned to Japan and within a year he had his first one-person show at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo. His success continued with a prize in 1936 from the Japanese contemporary artist group Nikakai Group, of which he went on to become a lifetime member. He taught at the School of Fine Arts, Nippon University from 1940 to 1944, but was evacuated to Mori village in the Miyagi Prefecture, later returning to Tokyo to teach at the Musashino Art Institute.
A realist painter in Japan, in 1950 he moved to New York City, where he produced abstract paintings. Undoubtedly stimulated by Abstract Expressionism, these paintings nevertheless display a strong Japanese sensibility and feeling for form. His paintings from the 1950s reveal subtle changes in the natural world through the use of imagery constructed with delicate, sensitive color tonalities, floating within the compositional space. In 1953 he began to exhibit his abstract expressionist paintings with the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City.
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