Sumiye Eugenia Okoshi

Born 1921
Seattle, Washington

Biography

Okoshi was raised and educated in Japan, graduating from Rikkyo Jo-Gakuin, Futaba, Kojo-Futaba-Kai in Tokyo. Returning to the United States at the end of World War II, she started her artistic career. She studied art with Fay Chong between 1951 and 1953 and with Nicholas Damascus at the Henry Frye Museum School between 1954 and 1956. She also studied with Jacob Lawrence at the New School Painting Workshop in New York.

Okoshi’s early style was influenced by the abstract trends prevalent in Seattle in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, in particular the work of Mark Tobey. Okoshi’s work from the 1950’s combines the subtle colors of Japanese art (gray, bronze, or earth tones) with the American concepts of Color Field painting and all-over composition, sometimes including linear networks. These formats continued through the early 1960’s, but were supplanted by a series of works with simple, relatively geometric forms in the late 1960’s. This latter series led to her recent work: collages that emphasize basic geometric patterns using stained rice papers and painted canvases, sometimes with wisps of gold and silver foil. Y.H.

Born 1921
Seattle, Washington


Selected Exhibitions:

1970                Miami Museum of Modern Art
1974-77           Japanese Artists Abroad, Azuma Gallery New York
1977                Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, N.Y.
1977                Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1991                The Fragmented Image, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
1993                Hammond Museum, North Salem, N.Y.
1993-94           Paper on Paper, Museum of the City of New York
1994                A View of One’s Own: The National Association of Women Artists
                         Collection at Rutgers, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers,
                         The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick.


Selected Collections:

Bank of Nagoya, New York
Hammond Museum, North Salem, N.Y.
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of
           New Jersey, New Brunswick
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida; Miami Museum
           of Modern Art
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.: National Academy
           of Sciences, 1991)


Selected Bibliography:

Brommer, Gerald. Collage Techniques: A Guide for Artists and Illustrators
            (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1994)
Jarrison, Helen. “Japanese Abstraction, Looking West,” New York Times,
           Long Island edition (December 29, 1985): 12; The Japanese Culture:
           Tradition & Today (Paramus, N.J.: Bergen Museum of Art and
           Science, 1983)
Murase, Miyeko. The Art of Sumiye Okoshi (Miami: Miami Museum of
           Modern Art, 1970)