Ken Nishi

Ken Nishi (1916-2001) was a Nisei abstract expressionist artist who worked in a wide range of media including watercolor, oil, gouache, wood and stone. He was educated and raised in California, but following the war, he lived seasonally in Nova Scotia, which strongly influenced his later work.

Nishi was born on June 7, 1916, in Salinas, California, where his father, Hakuo, was a pioneer in the modernization of farming and his mother, Masago Sakuma, was an accomplished tanka (an ancient Japanese poetry form) poet. ^[1] He was one of four children. Following graduation, Nishi studied art at Salinas Junior College before moving to Los Angeles in 1937 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied with Millard Sheets and graduated with honors. In 1939 he assisted Sheets in his 20'x 25' mural for Treasure Island. Pre-war he also exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, in 1939 and at Stanford University in 1940.

He served in the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Infantry Division during World War II while his mother and two sisters were incarcerated in the American concentration camp known as Poston, in Arizona. While stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, Nishi painted murals in recreation facilities; a newspaper photograph from the time shows his forty-foot mural in the library of the Service Club, depicting a rural Missouri scene and features an African American farmer. ^[2] He also exhibited during this period in St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri, and later in the Chicago area, where he met and eventually married Setsuko Matsunaga, who would become a distinguished Asian American scholar and professor of sociology. In Chicago, he also ran a Friday night art club and was a member of the Gaka Art Guild, a group of predominantly Nisei artists who exhibited regularly. ^[3]

His family settled in New York in 1952, where Nishi found work as a printer, sculptor, furniture maker, educator and art director for the Rockland Center for the Arts. Beginning in 1949, Nishi and his wife and four children would also live seasonally in Nova Scotia.

Nishi's solo exhibitions included shows at the Ozark Arts and Crafts Gallery in Springfield, Missouri (1942); St Louis Public Library, St. Louis, Missouri (1943); Ruth Dickens Gallery, Chicago, (1950); and the Rockland Center for the Arts, West Nyack, New York (1963, 1970-1978). A major retrospective of his work, Ken Nishi: Reflections in Time, was held at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax in 1999.

He died in Tappan, New York, on December 9, 2001 at age 85.