Metcalf Chateau

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The Metcalf Chateau group at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1954 The Metcalf Chateau group at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1954.jpg
The Metcalf Chateau group at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1954

The Metcalf Chateau, also known as The Group of Seven, [1] was a group of Asian-American artists with ties to Honolulu. The name is derived from a house slated for demolition on Metcalf Street in Honolulu, in which they exhibited in 1954. [2] [3] The exhibition was seen by Robert Griffin, director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, who arranged for the artists to have a group show at the museum. [4] The group's members were Satoru Abe (born 1926), Bumpei Akaji (1921-2002), Edmund Chung, Tetsuo Ochikubo (1923-1975), Jerry T. Okimoto (1924-1998), James Park, and Tadashi Sato (1923-2005).

The Metcalf Chateau overlaps with a loosely associated group of eleven modernist artists of Japanese descent, all nisei (second generation) born in Hawaii. These artists are Satoru Abe, Bumpei Akaji, Isami Doi, Keichi Kimura, Sueko Matsueda Kimura, Harue Oyama McVay, Tetsuo Ochikubo, Jerry T. Okimoto, Tadashi Sato, Toshiko Takaezu, and Harry Tsuchidana. [5] Isami Doi (1903-1965) was the oldest of these eleven artists and mentored many of them. [6]

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Keichi Kimura American painter

Keichi Kimura (1914–1988) was a painter and illustrator who was born in Waiʻanae, Hawaiʻi in 1914. He received his first art instruction from teacher Shirley Russell while attending President William McKinley High School in Honolulu. In 1936, he earned a B.A. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he studied under Henry H. Rempel and Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, and also met fellow art student and future wife, Sueko Matsueda. Keichi continued his education at Chouinard Art Institute, Columbia University and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He first exhibited at the Honolulu Museum of Art at 19 years of age. During the Second World War, he served with the 100th Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy and France, where he produced many drawings that were also exhibited at the Honolulu Museum of Art. He was divorced from Sueko in 1962 and died in Honolulu in 1988.

Isami Doi American painter

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Bumpei Akaji American sculptor

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Sueko Matsueda Kimura American painter

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Jerry T. Okimoto

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Harry Tsuchidana American painter

Harry Suyemi Tsuchidana is an American abstract painter. He was born in Waipahu, Hawaii to parents who owned a two-acre farm. Tsuchidana enlisted in the United States Marine Corps upon graduation from high school in 1952. When discharged from the Marines in 1955, he enrolled in the Corcoran School of Art. He then moved to New York City, where he studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and at the Pratt Contemporary Graphic Arts Center in New York City. While enrolled in classes, he worked as a guard and custodian at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and as a night watchman at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959, he received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship.

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.

References

Footnotes

  1. Morse, Marcia, Legacy: Facets of Island Modernism, Honolulu, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2001, ISBN   0937426482, p. 18
  2. Morse, Marcia, Legacy: Facets of Island Modernism, Honolulu, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2001, ISBN   0937426482, p. 18
  3. Mark, Steven, "Metcalf Chateau Show", Honolulu Star-Advertiser, July 27, 2014, p. F7
  4. Papanikolas, Theresa and Stephen Salel, Stephen, Abstract Expressionism, Looking East from the Far West, Honolulu Museum of Art, 2017, ISBN   9780937426920, p. 28
  5. Morse, Marcia, Legacy: Facets of Island Modernism, Honolulu, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2001, ISBN   0937426482, pp. 10-12
  6. Densho Encyclopedia