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Lot Essay
A modernist painter, Yasuo Kuniyoshi combined in his paintings elements of 19th Century folk art, Japanese motif, and modernist European and American art with a style infused with fantasy that is distinctly his own.
Kuniyoshi was born in Okayama, Japan in 1893, and sailed with his family to the United States in 1906. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design until 1909 and moved to New York one year later. In New York Kuniyoshi attended the National Academy of Design, the Robert Henri School, the Independent School and the Art Students League with perhaps his greatest influence, Kenneth Hayes Miller.
Kuniyoshi's first works after he left the Art Students League in 1920 were mostly of outdoor subjects, depicting people and animals in free dreamlike combinations such as Girl and Barnyard Animals. The cow is a recurrent theme in works executed during this time. Kuniyoshi later explained that he was born in the Japanese Year of the Cow, and he therefore often incoporated the cow into his compositions for this reason.
Kuniyoshi was born in Okayama, Japan in 1893, and sailed with his family to the United States in 1906. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design until 1909 and moved to New York one year later. In New York Kuniyoshi attended the National Academy of Design, the Robert Henri School, the Independent School and the Art Students League with perhaps his greatest influence, Kenneth Hayes Miller.
Kuniyoshi's first works after he left the Art Students League in 1920 were mostly of outdoor subjects, depicting people and animals in free dreamlike combinations such as Girl and Barnyard Animals. The cow is a recurrent theme in works executed during this time. Kuniyoshi later explained that he was born in the Japanese Year of the Cow, and he therefore often incoporated the cow into his compositions for this reason.