KYOHEI INUKAI (1913 -1985 - AKA Earle Goodenow)

Kyohei Inukai remains one of the most outstanding 20th century Impressionist artists in the USA. Born in Chicago in 1913, he attended the Chicago Art Institute, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Student's League in New York, where he continued to live and work. The artist had his first one-man show at the California Arts Club in 1934. Among other exhibitions were those at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Brooklyn Museum; Corcoran Biennial; White House Rotating Exhibition; and USIA Print Exhibition at the Osaka World Fair in Japan. Collections include the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York; Portland Museum of Fine Art, Oregon; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts; and the Wichita University Museum of Fine Art, Kansas.

For over four decades, Kyohei Inukai was one of the most eclectic and prolific artists of his time. He was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, carpenter, photographer, writer, inventor, author, and illustrator of children’s books. Equally, he was a maker of exquisite haiku – casual gems of a few preciously chosen words, which he illustrated with sparse elegance. The same refinement and eloquence are reflected through his many styles and media including charcoal, watercolor, oil, pastel, acrylic and ink. He was truly a 20th Century Renaissance Man.

As an abstract artist, Inukai used bright colors with a touch of Miro-like fantasy. Distinctively fine edges and careful tonal variations always characterised much of his painting and print making. He created his own brand of illusionary art: bending and shaping forms that become deceptively 3-D to the eye. Inukai was also an outstanding impressionist painter of landscapes and people. His distinctive style, exploiting the colour prism to create a balance between fantasy and reality, is both intriguing and compelling. As a sculptor, his work in aluminum and steel, featuring curving prisms, has a direct relationship to modern architectural design. His work was commissioned by Knoxville, Tennessee, and by malls such as the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, N.J. and Riverside Mall in Chicago.

His paintings were also admirably translated into the graphic medium which account for the large number of major U.S. corporations who own his work. His lithographs, serigraphs and silkscreens present a geometric abstract in bold, solid colors which create vibrant harmony. Inukai devoted himself to his one appointed business: to create. He travelled many paths to come into his inheritance. East and West do meet here in a unique harmony. Kyohei Inukai died in 1985, in New York City.

It is definitely time to REDISCOVER KYOHEI INUKAI.