Matsumi Kanemitsu, an abstract expressionist painter who lived and worked in New York during the early part of his career, was part of the legendary Cedar Bar group and friends with Franz Kline and Willem DeKooning. He was also a very good friend of Paul Jenkins and the two artists exchanged many paintings. Kanemitsu worked in gestural, non-figurative style through most of his career and in addition to painting on canvas, he mastered the traditional Japanese technique of sumi ink drawing on paper, watercolor painting and lithography. By the early 1960s Kanemitsu relocated to Los Angeles where he taught at Otis College of Art and Design. His work, following the transition to LA, took on a more Pop-inspired, biomorphic quality that later bordered on abstract landscapes. During that time, he also produced many lithographs at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles.