#YasuoKuniyoshi
Somebody Tore My Poster, (1943)

A young woman sits at a table, angled left, her posture heavy with thought. Her skin is rendered in pale, chalky tones against a deep green, softly mottled background. She wears a fitted white short-sleeved top. Over her hair is a rust-red headscarf that frames her face under a pointed overhang with a dark floral ornament and ties under her chin. Her eyebrows knit faintly. Her eyes look down and away rather than meeting ours. One hand rests across her lap while the other lifts toward her mouth, holding a slender white cigarette between her fingers. In the foreground, a small stemmed wine glass with a dark amber drink sits on the table, its rim catching a little light. The table edge cuts diagonally across the lower frame, creating a quiet distance between us and the woman, as if we’ve arrived mid-thought. Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (國吉康雄) builds tension through restraint via a limited palette, softened edges, and a face partly shadowed, making emotion feel present but not fully readable. The title “Waiting” turns the scene into time made visible like an in-between moment where the body holds what the voice doesn’t say. The cigarette and drink could be small rituals of endurance or perhaps individuality, while the headscarf is both protective and enclosing so it intensifies the sense of interiority. Painted in 1938, the work also sits in a world darkening with political violence and uncertainty. Kuniyoshi’s figurative language often channels that unease through intimate, everyday subjects rather than grand events. The result is a portrait of suspended agency that’s not passive, but poised showing someone thinking, bracing, and staying with her own mind until whatever comes next finally arrives.

待つ (Waiting) by 國吉康雄 / Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Japanese American) - Oil on canvas / 1938 - National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan) #WomenInArt #MOMAT #YasuoKuniyoshi #國吉康雄 #Kuniyoshi #東京国立近代美術館 #ModernArt #art #ArtText #JapaneseArt #JapaneseArtist #PortraitofaWoman #NationalMuseumOfModernArtTokyo

#YasuoKuniyoshi,
Self-Portrait as Photographer, (1924)

#YasuoKuniyoshi

Waiting, (1938)

#YasuoKuniyoshi

Portrait of a girl, (1939)

#YasuoKuniyoshi
'Waiting ' (1938)

Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s playful experiments across multiple paintings of “modern” bathers (aka swimmers) demonstrate the artist’s sly sense of humor and were born from summers at a coastal art colony in Ogunquit, Maine. We see a young curvaceous woman in a brown 1920s-style one-piece swimsuit, standing on a brown rock. The woman has large almond eyes, long straight black hair, and a bit of belly. She is prominently holding a cigarette in her right hand with her left hand behind her head. Her right leg is bent at the knee, and her left leg is straight as if she is surfing or simply posing for the artist. The background is a green and dark tone expanse under a blue sky and white clouds. Solid forms, a flattened sense of space, and a dark palette mark this work as belonging to Kuniyoshi’s early career. The tight swimsuit and small cigarette refer to newly relaxed norms of seaside behavior. For some, the boldly un-self-conscious bather next to a minuscule clamshell hints at famous Italian Renaissance works such as Sandro Botticelli’s 1486 “Birth of Venus.” Born in Okayama, Japan in 1889, Kuniyoshi immigrated to the United States in 1906 at 17, reportedly to avoid having to join the Japanese military. After a brief stay in Seattle and three years in Los Angeles, Kuniyoshi eventually moved to New York City, where he studied with American artists Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Although viewed as an immigrant, Kuniyoshi was very patriotic and identified himself as an American. He never received his citizenship due to exclusionary U.S. immigration laws. His first wife, American artist Katherine Schmidt, actually lost her American citizenship in 1919 due to her relationship with Kuniyoshi. They divorced in 1932 and a few years later he married American dancer and actress Sara Mazo. Despite being denied citizenship, during World War II, Kuniyoshi demonstrated his loyalty and patriotism for the United States as an anti-Japanese propaganda artist.

“Bather with Cigarette” by Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Japanese-American) - Oil on canvas / 1924 - Dallas Museum of Art (Texas) #WomenInArt #art #ArtText #OilPainting #womensart #YasuoKuniyoshi #Kuniyoshi #surfer #DallasMuseumofArt #kuniyoshi #smoking #国吉康雄 #JapaneseAmericanArtist #JapaneseAmericanArt #humor

#YasuoKuniyoshi
Somebody Tore My Poster, (1943)

A short lil clip from our latest episode on the insane life of #artist #painter #printmaker #YasuoKuniyoshi who lived through wars, interments, red scares and turned it into phenomenal work.

Listen on any pod player or watch at youtu.be/vQZ0yMxdfuE