Chiura Obata

Chiura Obata made California's landscapes a meeting ground for artistic traditions and the experience of migration. Born in Japan in 1885, he arrived in San Francisco in 1903 and died in Berkeley in 1975. Ink paintings, watercolours and woodblock prints express his attention to mountains, lakes and plants. His views of the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite combine close observation with expansive arrangements of space.

His teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, was interrupted during the Second World War when he and his family were incarcerated. At Tanforan and Topaz, he continued making art and helped establish art schools. After the war he returned to teaching. Nature remained a connecting thread through work that registers both observed beauty and historical disruption, sustaining a practice closely linked to the sharing of artistic knowledge.