Story by CARLENE COOMBS

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) has acquired 35 pieces of artwork from the Japanese American artist Chiura Obata. 

Obata’s artwork will join UMFA’s permanent collection starting fall 2022, according to Luke Kelly, associate curator of collections at UMFA. 

“We want to tell the complete art history narrative,” Kelly said in a Zoom interview. “Obata is part of the U.S. art history narrative, but for a long time, that story has not really been told. And we felt that this was a great opportunity … to tell the more complete story of American art history.” 

Obata was a prominent Japanese American immigrant artist during the 20th century who was incarcerated in the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah during World War II.

Before being placed there, Obata lived in California and taught at University of California, Berkeley, for 10 years, according to his granddaughter, Kimi Hill. He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1932 and taught art courses such as Japanese art history and brush techniques. He was also well known for his artwork of Yosemite National Park. 

Obata’s pieces will be rotated through the American gallery in the museum, Kelly said. The collection will include drawings and watercolors of depictions of his incarceration at Topaz and artwork of flowers, animals, and California landscapes, according to the UMFA press release.  

Scotti Hill, an art historian, critic and curator, said she was excited to hear UMFA had acquired Obata’s art. 

“I hope its arrival in Utah can be a catalyst for a larger conversation here in the state about racial injustice and bias,” Hill said, who is not related to Kimi Hill.

“He’s an incredible figure,” she said in a phone interview. 

Healing through art

Scotti Hill said Obata’s work “tells the story of painting as a meditative practice, as a sort of escape from the horrors of the war.”

According to History.com, about 120,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated during World War II.

While teaching at UC Berkeley, Kimi Hill said that Obata developed his philosophy of how to react to world events. That philosophy was to always start with your relationship to nature. 

Obata believed “that nature is the greatest teacher no matter what the situation,” she said. “That is where you can ground yourself and you know, learn and move forward and find hope.”

This philosophy is what he taught his students in California and what Obata turned to when he saw and experienced the injustice faced by Japanese Americans during the war. 

“He firmly believed in the power of nature, to help and to comfort people and also the power of art and creativity,” Hill said. 

During his time in Topaz, he painted and sketched the surrounding desert landscape. In other pieces, he included imagery of the barracks and barbed wire fence surrounding the camp, Hill said. Some of his art from this time will be included in the UMFA collection. 

“Some of them were just pure landscapes because again, that was the nurturing, embracing quality of nature that he said himself, he never felt abandoned,” she said. 

This philosophy led Obata to create an art school at the Tanforan Assembly Center in California, where he was incarcerated before being moved to Topaz in Utah. Almost immediately, Obata started talking to his friends and other students about starting an art school there, Hill said.  

He believed art education was as important as food, especially while undergoing a traumatic experience, she said.

Scotti Hill said Obata oversaw dozens of students in the Topaz art school. 

“What I think is really remarkable about Obata is not only his extraordinary career but his commitment to educating others,” she said. 

A powerful American story

Obata’s experience as an immigrant also greatly impacted his art and artistic style, Kimi Hill said. Unlike other Asian immigrants who came for economic reasons, Obata came as an artist, she said.  

“As an immigrant, he took his experience of culture and art history from Japan and brought it to America,” she said. 

Obata was born in Okayama, Japan, and immigrated to San Francisco as a teenager in 1903.

He used traditional Japanese art materials to interpret American scenery through a cultural lens that “was new to Americans,” Hill said. 

Scotti Hill said she believes his upbringing in Japan shaped his artistic identity and he was influenced by the artistic traditions of Japan, such as the Sumi ink art style. 

Kelly, who curates for UMFA, said Obata’s art style blended Western and Japanese techniques providing a “unique American vision.” 

“Chiura Obata’s art style is Chiura Obata,” he said. 

Scotti Hill said Obata had a tremendous impact on 20th-century art.

“He’s not only one of the most significant Japanese American artists of the 20th century,” she said, “but I would argue, without the qualifier of Japanese American, he is one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century.”

She said much of his impact comes from not just his time in Topaz but from his work building up to that event in his lifetime. 

“Just talking about Topaz, in some ways, limits the discussion of all of the incredible things he had done prior to that point — among them, working as an illustrator for some really prominent Japanese American publications in California [and] doing this incredible series of paintings and works of national parks in California,” Hill said. 

“His life experience and his commitment to art,” she said, “even in the most tragic and unjustified circumstances is a powerful American story.” 

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