YASUO KUNIYOSHI (1889 1953) Trees and Grass

Sale 2678 - Lot 51

Price Realized: $ 5,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000

YASUO KUNIYOSHI (1889-1953)
Trees and Grass.

Pen and ink on cream wove paper, 1921. 335x246 mm; 13¼x9¾ inches (irregular). Signed and dated lower right, with an ink sketch of a figural group verso.

Provenance
The artist.
The Downtown Gallery, New York (label).
Herbert Goldstone Collection, New York.
Weintraub Gallery, New York (label).
ACA Galleries, New York (label).
Purchased from the above by private collector, New York, December 8, 1998.
Thence by descent to current owners, New York.

Exhibited
"Line Up: Works on Paper Summer Group Show," DC Moore Gallery, New York, June 21-August 10, 2018 (label).
"Wood Gaylor and American Modernism," The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York, January 23-May 23, 2021 (label).

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Additional Details

Born in Okayama, Japan, Yasuo Kuniyoshi arrived in Seattle as a 16 year old with the goal to become an artist. He attended the Los Angeles School of Art and Design before moving to New York to ultimately study at the Art Students League from 1916-1920 (he also studied briefly with Robert Henri at the National Academy). He began to exhibit with the Penguin Club, an informal artists group founded by Walt Kuhn in 1917 to rebel against the stringent National Academy, and counted Guy Pène du Bois, Arthur B. Davies, Edward Hopper, Jules Pascin, Joseph Stella, and Max Weber as its affiliated artists. Though the club was only active until 1920, it sponsored social events, exhibitions, auctions, and sketch classes. Kuniyoshi remembered: "This small but fertile group helped establish the roots of contemporary American painting. Considered the rebels of their time, they waged a vigorous battle against conservatism with might and humor. We knew how to play and enjoy ourselves in those days." This humor and playfulness are clearly evident in Kuniyoshi's works, though there is also a sense of political awareness.

Finding success in New York, Kuniyoshi had his first solo exhibition at the Daniel Gallery and was soon exhibiting internationally in Europe and Japan through the 1930's. He traveled to Mexico in 1935 on a Guggenheim Fellowship and frequently summered in Woodstock, New York. Like several of his contemporaries, Kuniyoshi returned to the Art Students League as a teacher, a position that he would hold from 1933 to his death in 1953.