Matsumi "Mike" Kanemitsu (May 28, 1922 – May 11, 1992) was a Japanese-American painter who was also proficient in Japanese style sumi and lithography.New York Times obituary, May 16, 1992
Early life Kanemitsu was born to Japanese parents in Ogden, Utah on May 28, 1922. At age three, he was taken to Japan and grew up in a suburb of Hiroshima with his grandparents. He returned to the United States in 1940 and enlisted in the United States Army in 1941 at Fort Douglas, at which point he renounced his Japanese citizenship and became solely an American citizen.Nordland, Gerald. "Matsumi Kanemitsu: The Man and His Work." In Kanemitsu, Matsumi, ed. Osaka Prefectural Government, 176-180. Osaka: Osaka-fu, 1998 He was arrested after the attack on Pearl Harbor and interrogated then released. In the following years he was detained in army camps in the Midwest (including Fort Douglas, Utah, and Fort Riley). While incarcerated, he began drawing portraits and decorating with supplies provided by the American Red Cross. After his release, Kanemitsu volunteered for service overseas and served as a hospital assistant in France.
Career In 1946, Kanemitsu was discharged from the Army and undertook formal art education with Fernand Léger in Paris, with Karl Metzler in Baltimore, and with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League of New York beginning in 1951.Yau, John, "Kanemitsu in California during the 1960s and 1970s", The Brooklyn Rail, May 6, 2008 Slivka, Rose C.S. "Matsumi Kanemitsu: A Memoir, A History, and A Tribute." In Kanemitsu, Matsumi, ed. Osaka Prefectural Government, 181-184. Osaka: Osaka-fu, 1998. Among the jobs he took to support himself while in art school was a position as director of entertainment in a Baltimore gambling hall, where he oversaw the striptease dancers.
Though he painted representational works in the early 1950s, Kanemitsu is generally considered a second-generation abstract expressionist.Matsumi Kanemitsu on ArtNet Later in the 1950s, with the support of Frank O'Hara and Harold Rosenberg, he was able to show his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Radich Gallery. He is best known for his non-objective paintings, which are often hard-edge.
While at the Art Students League he associated with artists such as Paul Jenkins, Warren Brandt, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and others. By 1958 he was firmly entrenched in abstract expressionism and was close with Norman Bluhm. In the 1950s and early 60s he received two Longview Foundation awards and a Ford Foundation Fellowship to practice lithography at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles He moved to Los Angeles in 1961, in part due to his dislike of the rise of Pop Art in New York, and was on the faculty of Chouinard Art Institute from 1965 to 1970, California Institute of the Arts from 1970 to 1971, and the Otis College of Art and Design from 1971 to 1983. In 1990, along with fellow artist Nancy Uyemura and two dealers from Japan, he opened Gallery IV, which showed both local Los Angeles artists and Japanese artists.Uyemura, Nancy. "Kanemitsu: An Artist's Artist." In Kanemitsu, Matsumi, ed. Osaka Prefectural Government, 185-186. Osaka: Osaka-fu, 1998. Kanemitsu died of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on May 11, 1992.New York Times obituary, May 16, 1992
Legacy In 2018, Kanemitsu's former home at 800 Traction Avenue in Los Angeles was set to be landmarked by the city, but controversy erupted over the erasure of its history as the home of a number of Japanese-American artists, including Kanemitsu.
Kanemitsu's work is represented by Louis Stern Fine Arts.
Selected Public Collections
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont, California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, California Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan Grunewald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, California Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Hiroshima, Japan Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Wales New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico Norah Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, University of Utah, Logan, Utah Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
References Brown, Michael D., Views from Asian California 1920–1965, An Illustrated History, San Francisco, Michael D. Brown, 1992 Yamaki Art Gallery, Matsumi Kanemitsu Lithographs 1961–1990, Osaka, Yamaki Art Gallery, 1990 Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Works in Black and White, 1958–1988, Los Angeles, Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, 1988 Nordland, Gerald, Matsumi Kanemitsu (1922-1992) A Retrospective, Beverly Hills Louis Newman Galleries, 1993 Uyemura, Nancy, "Portrait of an Artist", Tozai Times, issue 51, December 1988
Footnotes
External links
Matsumi Kanemitsu website via Louis Stern Fine Arts: https://www.matsumikanemitsu.com/ Matsumi Kanemitsu on ArtNet: http://www.artnet.com/artists/matsumi-kanemitsu/ Matsumi Kanemitsu at the Smithsonian American Art Museum: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/matsumi-kanemitsu-2540