The Hawaiian archipelago consists of 137 islands in the Pacific Ocean that are far from any other land. Polynesians arrived there one to two thousand years ago, and in 1778 Captain James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to visit Hawaii. The art created in these islands may be divided into art existing prior to Cook’s arrival; art produced by recently arrived westerners; and art produced by Hawaiians incorporating western materials and ideas. Public collections of Hawaiian art may be found at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Bishop Museum (Honolulu), the Hawaii State Art Museum and the University of Göttingen in Germany.
John Chin Young 容澤泉 (1909–1997) was a painter who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 26, 1909. He was the son of Chinese immigrants and began drawing at the age of eight, stimulated by Chinese calligraphy, which he learned in Chinese language school. Young had his first and only art lessons while a student at President William McKinley High School in Honolulu. Thereafter, his art was entirely self-taught. Young is best known for his Zen-like depictions of horses, paintings of children, and abstractions. Over the years, he acquired an important collection of ancient Asian art, which he donated to the Honolulu Museum of Art and the University of Hawaii at Manoa as the John Young Museum. John Chin Young died in 1997 at the age of 88. His daughter Debbie Young is also a painter residing in Hawaii.
Isami Doi was an American printmaker and painter.
Hon Chew Hee was an American muralist, watercolorist and printmaker who was born in Kahului, on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 1906. He grew up in China, where he received his early training in Chinese brush painting. He returned to the United States in 1920 at age 14 in order to further his training at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving that school's highest academic honor. He then taught in China until moving to Hawaii in 1935. In Hawaii, he worked as a freelance artist and held classes in both Western and Eastern styles of painting. Together with Isami Doi (1903–1965), Hee taught painting classes at the YMCA. At this time, Doi instructed the young artist in woodcarving techniques and Hee, like his master, created wood engravings drawn from the rural life in the Islands. Hee also founded the Hawaii Watercolor and Serigraph Society.
Shirley Ximena Hopper Russell, also known as Shirley Marie Russell, was an American artist best known for her paintings of Hawaii and her still lifes of Hawaiian flowers. She was born Shirley Ximena Hopper in Del Rey, California, in 1886. She graduated in 1907 from Stanford University, where she discovered art. Shirley married Lawrence Russell, an engineer, in 1909. When he died in 1912, she began teaching in Palo Alto, and dabbling in painting. In 1921, she and her son came to Hawaii for a visit and decided to stay. She studied under Hawaiian artist Lionel Walden during the 1920s and traveling to Europe several times to further her art education. She studied in Paris during the 1930s and the cubist influence can be seen in a number of her works. She taught art at President William McKinley High School in Honolulu for more than 20 years. Around 1935-1936, the Japanese publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962) published more than several woodblock prints she designed. The majority of these prints depict colorful and detailed tropical flowers, while at least one print, Carmel Mission, is a California landscape.
Juliette May Fraser was an American painter, muralist and printmaker. She was born in Honolulu, which was then the capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii. After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in art, she returned to Hawaii for several years. She continued her studies with Eugene Speicher and Frank DuMond at the Art Students League of New York and at the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting in Woodstock, New York. She returned to Hawaii to teach, like her parents who had both come to Hawaii as educators. Fraser designed the Hawaii Sesquicentennial half dollar, which was engraved by Chester Beach and issued in 1928.
Tadashi Sato was an American artist. He was born in Kaupakalua on the Hawaiian island of Maui. His father had been a pineapple laborer, merchant, and calligrapher, and Tadashi's grandfather was a sumi-e artist.
Satoru Abe is a Japanese American sculptor and painter.
Ben Norris (1910–2006) was an American modernist painter.
Louis Pohl was an American painter, illustrator, art teacher, printmaker and cartoonist. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915. A childhood illness made it impossible to walk without pain and prevented Pohl from entering school until he was 8 years old. To keep him occupied, his parents would give him papers and pencils with which to draw. When 14 years old, Pohl spent his summer caddying at a local golf course. A regular foursome of well-to-do women made an unusual wager—the loser would make their caddy's wish come true. Mrs. Yaeger paid for Pohl's tuition at the Art Academy of Cincinnati for two years. He spent the next 4 years as a teacher's assistant. He did most of the hands-on teaching given to the art students, and he also taught art to underprivileged kids on Saturdays. Eventually, Pohl received his certificate of art upon the completion of a full standing nude copy of a Rembrandt that hung in the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Sueko Matsueda Kimura was an American artist. She was born in Papaikou, Hawaii in 1912. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she met fellow art student Keichi Kimura, whom she married in 1942. She also attended the Chouinard Art Institute, Columbia University, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League of New York. She taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1952 until her retirement as Professor of Art in 1977.
Edward Malcolm Brownlee (1929-2013) was an American sculptor known for his modernist architectural creations with a style influenced by the art of Oceania, Asia, and the Pacific Northwest. He is best known for his work in Hawaii, where he was a frequent collaborator with architect Pete Wimberly.
Huc-Mazelet Luquiens (1881–1961) was an American printmaker, painter and art educator who was born June 30, 1881 in Massachusetts to Jules Luquiens a French-speaking Swiss and Emma Clark who was born in Ohio.
John Ingvard Kjargaard was a Danish-American painter, printmaker and collage artist.
Helen Gilbert, also known as Helen Gilbert-Bushnell, Helen Odell Gilbert and Helen Odell, was an American artist and art-educator born in Mare Island, California. She earned a baccalaureate in art at Mills College, in California. After graduation, she moved to Honolulu, where she married Honolulu physician Fred Gilbert. In 1968, she received an MFA degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and then remained on the faculty for 30 years. Her second marriage was to fellow artist Kenneth Wayne Bushnell in 1995. She had also been a visiting professor at Parsons The New School for Design and the Pratt Institute. She died at home of cancer on April 8, 2002.
Allyn Bromley is an American printmaker and art educator who was born in San Francisco. She first came to Hawaii in 1952, and subsequently moved to Waikiki, where she lived for nine years. From 1961 to 1965, she lived in Europe, returning to Hawaii in 1965. She received a BFA from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1968 and an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1971.
Ron Leory Kowalke was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, and art educator born in Chicago. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago, but earned his BA from Rockford University in 1959. He received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1960. He taught at Northern Illinois University and the Swain School of Design before joining the faculty of the University of Hawaii. He taught in Hawaii from 1969 until his retirement as a professor emeritus in 2000.
Harue Oyama McVay is a ceramist born in Honolulu, Hawaii. While growing up, she had the opportunity to watch the landscape painter D. Howard Hitchcock (1861–1943), who rented his studio from the Oyama family. As an undergraduate at the University of Hawaii, she enrolled in a ceramics class taught by Claude Horan. She graduated from the university in 1950 and earned an MA from Ohio State University in 1951. She taught at the University of Hawaii from 1951 until 1993, when she retired as a professor emeritus.
Murray Turnbull (1919–2014) was an American artist and art educator, but is best known as the founder of the East–West Center in Honolulu. He was born in Sibley, Iowa. He received a BFA from the University of Nebraska in 1941 and an MA from the University of Denver in 1949. In 1954, he began teaching at the University of Hawaii In 1959, while acting dean of the university's College of Arts and Sciences, Turnbull first proposed an "international college" for all the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. The idea was advanced by Hawaii's delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives John A. Burns, who, with the help of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, obtained federal funding for an international university in Hawaii, now known as the East–West Center. Turnbull retired from the University of Hawaii as a professor emeritus in 1985.
Tseng Yu-ho, who is also known as Betty Ecke, was an artist, art historian and educator.
