George Joji Miyasaki (1935-2013) was a painter and printmaker active in the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Kalopa, Hawaii and moved to California in 1953. He received a B.F.A. and a B.A.Ed. from the

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in San ...

in 1957 and an M.F.A. from the same institution in 1958, studying under

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...

and

Nathan Oliveira Nathan Oliveira (December 19, 1928 – November 13, 2010) was an American Painting, painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese people, Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the s ...

.Georgemiyasaki.com
/ref> After teaching at the

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, he was appointed a full professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1964. By 1958, he was experimenting with methods and materials, producing what appeared to be the first color lithographs by a West Coast Abstract Expressionist that were widely shown. (They were included in 13 exhibitions in 1958 alone.) In 1960,

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

visited Miyasaki's studio to try his hand at

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

. De Kooning, with the help of Miyasaki and

, created at least two abstract

lithographs Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

. Miyasaki's paintings and lithographs from the 1950s, such as ''Green Landscape'', in the collection of the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

, are typical of

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

. In the 1960s, his work began to incorporate well defined forms, an example of which is ''Red Eye'' from 1963. "Miyasaki's paintings radiate an expressionistic intensity derived not from the discordant drips and splashes of the spontaneous Ab Ex encounter, but from a meticulous compositional strategy that uses subtle juxtapositions of color and line to achieve an overall sense of resolution and harmony." In his later Magnolia Edition collagraphs, the "muscular and delicate elements" showed that the West Coast strain of Abstract Expressionism to be every bit as vital and impressive as its New York counterpart," according to Bay Area writer Nick Stone. His work is included in the collections of The

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

(London), the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, the

the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(New York City), the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

(Washington, D.C), the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

, and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

(New York City).Obituary
in ''SFGate'', Feb. 27, 2014

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miyasaki, George 1935 births 2013 deaths Painters from Hawaii 20th-century American painters Printmakers from Hawaii American artists of Japanese descent 20th-century American printmakers University of California, Berkeley faculty 21st-century American painters