Ansei Uchima Explained

Ansei Uchima
Birth Date:May 1, 1921
Birth Place:Stockton, California, U.S.
Death Place:New York, New York, U.S.
Education:Waseda University, Tokyo
Known For:woodblock printmaking
Style:modern
Spouse:Toshiko Uchima

Ansei Uchima (Japanese 内間安瑆) (May 1, 1921 - May 9, 2000) was an American artist and teacher primarily known as a sōsaku-hanga (creative print) woodblock printmaker who employed traditional ukiyo-e Japanese techniques to produce abstract works covering a range of distinct personal styles.

Early life and education

Uchima was born in Stockton, California on May 1, 1921,[1] the eldest of four sons, to Japanese immigrant parents Anchin and Haru, and was raised in Los Angeles. Upon graduating from Manual Arts High School in 1940, Uchima left the United States to study in Japan, enrolling the following year at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he studied architecture.[2] Caught in Japan during the Second World War, Uchima discontinued his architectural studies and remained in Tokyo for 19 years, pursuing an artistic career based on painting and printmaking.[3]

Career

Uchima's career as a woodblock printmaker began in Tokyo in the mid-1950s, when the sōsaku-hanga movement was gaining popularity. Americans living in Japan, such as authors James Michener and Oliver Statler, became collectors of sōsaku-hanga and sought to make them known abroad.[4]

Uchima served as a bridge between these Americans, on the one hand, and the Japanese artists, on the other, drawing upon his bi-cultural background, bilingual ability and artistic experience, assisting Statler, as interpreter, with dozens of interviews Statler conducted with these artists.[5] Those interviews culminated in Statler's 1956 book Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn,[6] which introduced sōsaku-hanga to the United States, where they earned critical acclaim and popularity.[7] Inspired and influenced by the sōsaku-hanga masters with whom he had become personally acquainted, in particular Kōshirō Onchi[8] and Shikō Munakata,[9] Uchima produced a large number of prints in Tokyo between 1955 and 1959, which he exhibited in shows in Tokyo, as well as the São Paulo International Biennale and the Grenchen International Print Triennial.[10] He formed part of the younger generation of artists comprising "the central core of the contemporary print world" in Japan that included Hideo Hagiwara, Fumio Kitaoka, Jun'ichirō Sekino, Hodaka Yoshida and Masaji Yoshida.[11]

In November 1959, Uchima left Japan with his family and returned to the United States, settling in New York City the following year. By that time, in Michener's words, Uchima was "a master craftsman" who was "producing some of the finest prints being made today."[12] Uchima's friend, sculptor Isamu Noguchi, wrote that Uchima was recognized in Japan "as one of the leaders in the renaissance of the woodcut."[13] Uchima helped to organize "Modern Japanese Prints – Sōsaku Hanga," a comprehensive exhibition of sōsaku-hanga from its origins in the early twentieth century to the present, the first of its kind, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960.[14]

As he had done in Japan, Uchima served as a bridge between the American and Japanese printmaking worlds, bringing Japanese technique and sensibilities to his work in New York, where he became a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists[15] and the International Graphic Arts Society, which commissioned editions of nine prints by Uchima.[16] He also served as a resource to Japanese artists in the United States[17] and was one of the few instructors of Japanese woodblock printing techniques in the country.[18] He taught first at Pratt Graphic Art Center in 1961 and 1962, and then full-time at Sarah Lawrence College from 1962 to 1982 and part-time at Columbia University from 1968 until 1982.[19] Uchima was awarded two John H. Simon Guggenheim Fellowships, one in 1962 and the other in 1970.[20]

Uchima's style evolved from works influenced by Abstract Expressionism until the mid-1960s, to minimalist compositions using geometric shapes from the late-1960s to the mid-1970s and, from 1977, to pastel hued works with "a 'tapestried' color surface" and parallel vertical lines forming the "panels" of a traditional Japanese folding screen, or byōbu, the complexities of which required great technical skill and labor, with up to 45 printings per sheet.[21] In addition to woodcut prints, he produced etchings, oil and watercolor paintings and drawings in pastel, charcoal and pencil.

In December 1982, Uchima suffered a stroke which cut his career short. His works from 1955 to 1982 have continued to be exhibited in the United States and Japan. Sarah Lawrence College appointed him to its emeritus faculty in 1988 and the Japan Print Association named him an emeritus member in 1995.[22] Uchima died in New York on May 9, 2000. There have been two major retrospective shows of Uchima's work, the first in 1985 at Sarah Lawrence College and the second, in 2014, in Okinawa, Japan, the birthplace of his parents, at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum (Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind),[23] which displayed more than 100 of Uchima's works from throughout his career.

Personal life

In 1955, Uchima married Japanese artist Toshiko Aohara, who was one of the first women members of the Democratic Artists Association (Demokrāto) and a co-founder of the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai (Women's Print Association) in Japan in 1955[24] and, later, in New York, a noted collage and box assemblage artist. The Uchimas' works have been exhibited together in a number of two-person shows at the Striped House Museum of Art and the Toki-no-Wasuremono Gallery in Tokyo. Their son, born in 1958, is an attorney in New York.

Teaching

Sarah Lawrence College faculty (1962–82) and emeritus faculty (1988); Columbia University lecturer and adjunct faculty (1968–82); Sarah Lawrence College Summer Art Program, Lacoste, France (now Lacoste School of Arts), instructor (1971–75);[25] Pratt Graphic Art Center, guest instructor (1961, 1962); Art Institute of Chicago, special lecturer (1960).

Collections

Uchima's work is represented in the permanent collections of more than 80 museums and major institutions, including:

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

More than 50 solo exhibitions in the United States and Japan, including:

Two-person and three-person shows included those with Masayuki Nagare at Yoseido Gallery, 1957; with Toshiko Uchima at Striped House Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1986, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2012 and Toki-no-Wasuremono Gallery, Tokyo, 2018; and with Toshiko Uchima and Isamu Noguchi at Hunterdon Art Center, New Jersey, 1980.

Selected group exhibitions

Selected publications

Notes and References

  1. Acton, David. A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking, 1890-1960. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990). p. 287.
  2. Uchima, Ansho Mas and Shinmoto, Minoru. Seinan – Southwest Los Angeles: Stories and Experiences From Residents of Japanese Ancestry. (Glendale: J & L Press, Inc., 2010). p. 195.
  3. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum Exhibition Catalogue. Tokyo: Bunshin Printing Co., Ltd., 2015. p. 154
  4. Web site: UHM Oliver Statler Collection. www.hawaii.edu.
  5. Statler, Oliver. "Ansei Uchima: A Friendship." Sarah Lawrence College. Ansei Uchima: A Retrospective. Exhibition Catalogue. Tappan, New York: Shepherd Press, 1985
  6. Statler, Oliver. Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., 1956
  7. Merritt, Helen. Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1990. pp. 154-55
  8. Statler, Oliver. "College Women Slate Lively Print Exhibit." Asahi Evening News. October 22, 1956.
  9. Statler, Oliver. "No Tug of War for Attention at Uchima-Nagare Exhibition." Asahi Evening News. March 12, 1957.
  10. Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. Exhibition Catalogue. Tokyo: Bunshin Printing Co., Ltd., 2015. pp. 154-59.
  11. Kawakita, Michiaki. Contemporary Japanese Prints. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1967. p. XXI.
  12. https://www.biblio.com/book/summer-stream-uchima-ansei/d/1253802631 (quoting from IGAS Bulletin Series 52, January 1963.
  13. Noguchi, Isamu. "Ansei Uchima." Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p. 141.
  14. Art Institute of Chicago. Japan's Modern Prints - Sosaku Hanga. Exhibition Catalogue, 1960.
  15. Web site: Past Members. Society of American Graphic Artists.
  16. Sarah Lawrence College. Ansei Uchima: A Retrospective. Exhibition Catalogue. (Tappan, New York: Shepherd Press, 1985)
  17. Nagare, Masayuki. "Ansei Uchima." Hanga Geijutsu, Summer 1982, no. 38, pp. 220-21 (translated by William Masuda and reprinted in Ansei Uchima: A Retrospective).
  18. Vollmer, April. Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop. Berkeley: Watson-Guptil Publications, 2015. p. 5.
  19. Acton, David. "Uchima in America." Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p. 143.
  20. Web site: Ansei Uchima. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation....
  21. Uchima, Ansei. "My 30 Years Adventure with Woodblock Printing." Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p. 140.
  22. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p.158.
  23. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p. 159.
  24. Wechsler, Jeffrey ed. Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945-1970. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997). p. 178.
  25. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. p. 156-57.
  26. Web site: Search the Collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  27. Web site: Ansei Uchima | MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art.
  28. Web site: Ansei Uchima. whitney.org.
  29. Web site: Uchima Ansei. May 29, 1921. The Art Institute of Chicago.
  30. Web site: Artist Info. www.nga.gov.
  31. Web site: Ansei Uchima | Smithsonian American Art Museum. americanart.si.edu.
  32. Web site: Descending Moon. philamuseum.org.
  33. Web site: FAMSF. FAMSF.
  34. Web site: Uchima Ansei | LACMA Collections. collections.lacma.org.
  35. Web site: Collections Online | British Museum. www.britishmuseum.org.
  36. Web site: Het lied van het zeestrand, Uchima Ansei, 1959. Rijksmuseum.
  37. Web site: UCHIMA, Ansei （作家）. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
  38. Ansei Uchima: Symphony of Colors and Wind. pp. 154-159
  39. Web site: SUSAN TELLER GALLERY. www.susantellergallery.com.
  40. Web site: "Imprinting in Their Time: Japanese Printmakers, 1912-2022," 2023-24. carnegieart.org.
  41. Web site: Des Moines Art Center, "East and Beyond: Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries," 2015. www.frankenthalerfoundation.org.
  42. Web site: Michener Art Museum, "Mid-Century to Manga: The Modern Japanese Print in America," 2023. www.michenerartmuseum.org.
  43. Web site: Print Center New York, "A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries," 2023. www.printcenternewyork.org.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ansei Uchima".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.