The exhibition was funded in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program.
Complementing _MINGEI OF JAPAN – The Legacy of Its Founders: Sōetsu Yanagi, Shōji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai_ was the exhibition _SUEO SERISAWA – Poetry in Painting,_ paintings and woodblock prints by this friend of the founders of the Mingei Association of March 20.
Born in Yokohama in 1910, Mr. Serisawa’s family immigrated to Seattle in 1918 and, a few years, later moved to Long Beach, California. His first teacher was his father Yoichi, who had studied at the Imperial Art Academy in Tokyo. After his father’s death in 1926, he studied with George Barker and at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles. During his 20s, Mr. Serisawa painted impressionist landscapes and portraits.
Leaving California in the early 1940s, he took his family to Colorado, then to Chicago where he studied at the Art Institute. From Chicago, he moved to New York in 1943, where he met artists Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Isamu Noguchi. There he was influenced by Abstract expressionism, and his work became more bold and expressive. He returned to Los Angeles in 1947 to teach at the Kahn Institute and at Scripps College, Claremont. He also taught at the University of Southern California and the Laguna Beach School of Art.
A trip to Japan in 1955 with fellow painter Millard Sheets inspired Mr. Serisawa to use his work as the medium to express his own philosophy inspired by Zen Buddhism and J. Krishnamurti’s teachings.
Calligraphic forms, gold and silver leaf and sumi paintings became his focus, and he blended oriental screen paintings with European Expressionism.
Widely exhibited, Mr. Serisawa has presented one-man shows and participated in exhibitions at numerous institutions including The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dayton Institute of Art, Dayton, Ohio, Dalzell Hatfield Gallery, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, De Young Museum, San Francisco, Tokyo International Exhibit, Sao Paolo Biennale and San Diego Museum of Art.
His works are in private collections and many public collections including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Santa Barbara Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Joslyn Museum, Omaha and the Museum of Modern Art, Eilat, Israel.