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“Study for a Self-Portrait” by Hisako Hibi (Japanese-American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1944 - Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, California) #WomenInArt #JANM #art #WomensArt #artText #WomanArtist #HisakoHibi #Hibi #JapaneseAmericanArt #artwork #Selfportrait #JapaneseAmericanNationalMuseum
This self-portrait shows Japanese-born American artist Hisako Hibi against a soft, indistinct background of gray and beige tones. She faces forward with steady directness, her dark eyes meeting our gaze. Her expression is steady, unsmiling to convey dignity under duress. Her black hair is neatly parted and drawn back, framing her oval face. She wears a muted green blouse with a pointed collar, rendered with broad, confident brushstrokes. The subdued palette and simplicity highlight her thoughtful presence. In 1944, behind the barbed wire of the Topaz War Relocation Center, Hisako Hibi painted herself with quiet determination. She, her husband (painter Matsusaburo “George” Hibi), and their children, like thousands of Japanese Americans, had been uprooted from their San Francisco home and confined in the Utah desert. In “Study for a Self-Portrait,” Hibi stares out with steady eyes, her expression calm yet tinged with sorrow. The muted palette and simplicity of form reflect the starkness of camp life, but also her refusal to be silenced. Amid hardship, she taught art, painted whenever supplies allowed, and used her canvas to affirm identity and endurance. This act of self-portraiture was not merely personal; it was a declaration of presence in a moment when her community was reduced to numbers. After the war, she returned to San Francisco, where she continued to paint and eventually recorded her camp experiences in “Peaceful Painter.” Today, her work is recognized not only for its aesthetic merit but also for its testimony of resilience, creativity, and survival. Hibi’s impact lies in her ability to transform personal suffering into lasting art, giving voice to a history often overlooked.
September 8, 2025 at 7:04 AM
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Untitled (Amache Portrait) by Tokio Ueyama (Japanese American) - Oil on canvas / January 17, 1944 - Denver Art Museum (Colorado) #WomenInArt #art #artwork #TokioUeyama #Ueyama #portraitofaWoman #JapaneseAmericanArt #DenverArtMuseum #BlueskyArt #JapaneseAmerican #artText #JapaneseAmericanArtist
This is a portrait of a young Japanese American woman presented from the chest up. Her dark hair has tendrils framing her face and some loose strands falling to her shoulders rendered with loose, expressive brushstrokes. Her skin tone is light with a subtle blush on her cheeks. Her expression is calm, her eyes directed slightly upward and to our right. Her lips are painted a bold, reddish-orange. She is wearing a collared shirt with a loosely-woven, plaid pattern in muted colors— primarily shades of grey, burgundy, and muted reddish-orange. The plaid pattern is not precisely uniform; the brushwork suggests a certain casualness in the texture of the fabric. The background is a very pale, almost off-white, and deliberately understated, focusing our attention entirely on the woman. Anti-Japanese racism in America following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by imperial Japan resulted in one of the nation’s most regrettable chapters. Under the guise of “national security,” roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans, 79,000 of them U.S. citizens, were identified by the government, given 6 days to put their affairs in order – sell houses, close businesses, contact family – collect what few possessions they could carry, then sent to remote military zones, mostly across the Western U.S. Anyone at least 1/16th Japanese was taken. Officially termed “relocation centers,” the prisoners were held in concentration camps full of innocent civilians with no charges made against them and held against their will, indefinitely, in miserable conditions, behind barbed wire and under armed guard. One of these camps was known as Amache, near Granada, CO, 220 miles southeast of Denver. One of the prisoners there was the Japanese-born American artist Tokio Ueyama … and another was this unidentified young woman who posed for this memorable oil portrait on January 17, 1944 at camp Amache.
August 28, 2025 at 6:49 AM
arakawapottery.bsky.social
A quiet delivery to the Cha May Ching Museum Boutique at the Asian Art Museum. Our handmade pottery will be on display Aug 14–Feb. More to come.

@AsianArtMuseum 
#ArakawaPottery #AsianArtMuseum #ChaMayChingMuseumBoutique #PotteryDelivery #MuseumExhibit #HandmadeCeramics #JapaneseAmericanArt
August 6, 2025 at 5:31 AM
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“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
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.
June 14, 2025 at 4:34 PM
japanifornia.bsky.social
#AAPIHeritageMonth

"Pictures of Belonging” at @smithsonian American Art Museum highlights Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi & Miné Okubo—trailblazing Japanese American artists. On view now in DC. Info: americanart.si.edu/e...

#AmericanArt #JapaneseAmericanArt
May 1, 2025 at 7:55 PM
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The Evacuee (Suye Ueyama) in Kimono" by Tokio Ueyama (American, born in Japan) - Oil on canvas / 1942 - Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, California) #womeninart #janm #tokioueyama #art #japaneseamerican #oilpainting #womensart #portraitofawoman #japaneseamericanart #fineart #history
Japanese American artist Tokio Ueyama’s 1942 portrait of a woman in long blue dress reclining in wood frame folding chair as she crochets in front of a doorway opening out to a sunlit exterior depicts his spouse Suye Ueyama during the imprisonment of Americans with Japanese ancestry by the United States throughout World War II. The sunlight through open curtained doorway provides natural lighting for the woman as she looks down at her crocheting, facing left. Her hair is pulled back neatly at the back of her head. She wears white sandals over dark socks. A ball of yarn sits in a basket near her feet, next to a make-shift table with a tin cup and a black handled pot on the right. A pair of sandals rests on doorframe. Shade from the barracks extends a short distance outside with a partial view of one building in direct sunlight to the left and a row of three barracks in distance. This painting depicts the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California constructed at the legendary horse track, where thousands of Japanese-Americans stayed before being transferred to incarceration camps. It may appear to be a gentle and serene scene, but the barracks and the dry inhospitable earth remind us that it was not her choice to be there. In 1941, Tokio and Suye were among the 120,000 Japanese people in the U.S. who were deemed, without cause, as dangers to the country and forced into makeshift prisons. They were “forcibly removed from their home in southern California and sent to the Granada Relocation Center, now known as the Amache National Historic Site, in southeast Colorado.” More than 10,000 people were unconstitutionally incarcerated at Amache in the following years, making it the tenth largest "city" in Colorado at the time. Despite the upheaval and, no doubt, the trauma, Ueyama continued to paint. He captured scenes of the camp and its surroundings and inhabitants while also teaching adult art classes in Block 7E to about 150 students.
April 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM