Chiura Obata
Chiura Obata was born in Okayama Prefecture, Japan on November 18th, 1885 and is the Japanese-American Artist. At the age of 89, Chiura Obata biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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In 1903, Obata left for the United States. He arrived in Seattle, where he planned to study American art before continuing to Paris to study European art. When he got to San Francisco, he found work as a domestic servant in a household, with the pay of $1.50 per week plus room and board. He was one of the founders of the Fuji Club, the first Japanese-American baseball team on the American mainland. In 1906, Obata made on-site sketches of the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake. In 1909 he worked in the hops fields in the Sacramento Valley.
Eventually, Obata was able to earn his living in California as an illustrator for different newspapers, including San Francisco's two Japanese newspapers, The New World and the Japanese American, and as a commercial designer. As a designer he decorated the famous Oriental rooms for Gump's department store and did similar work for the Emporium and City of Paris department stores, now known as City of Paris Dry Goods Co. He designed "Jewel Rooms" for the G. T. Mars Company and one in the Hotel Ambassador. He made five large murals for the Toyo Kisen Kaisha Steamship Company and for the Iwata Dry Goods Company.
From 1915 to 1917 Obata was an illustrator and cover page designer for the magazine Japan, published for the Toyo Kisen Kaisha Steamship Co., during which time he turned out about 3000 illustrations and numerous cover designs.
During the 1920s, Obata spent much time painting landscapes throughout California. In 1921, he co-founded the East West Art Society in San Francisco. On the invitation of Worth Ryder, a professor of art at UC Berkeley who had become a friend, Obata spent six weeks during the summer of 1927 on a sketching tour of Yosemite and the Sierra high country, producing over 100 new sketches and ink paintings in six weeks. The first exhibition Obata had for American audiences was in the following year, 1928.
Post-war career
In 1945, when the military exclusion ban was lifted, Obata was reinstated as an instructor at UC Berkeley. In 1949 he was promoted to associate professor of Art. In 1950, he and his wife moved out of the attic apartment of a friend, purchasing a house in the Elmwood district in Berkeley, where they had lived before the war.
His one-man shows continued, as did his sketching and painting trips in the high country, often with the Sierra Club. In 1953 he retired as Professor Emeritus from UC Berkeley. In 1954 he became a naturalized citizen.
Obata played a pivotal role in introducing Japanese art techniques and aesthetics to other artists in California. These techniques and aesthetics became one of the distinctive characteristics of the California Watercolor School.