Koichi Nomiyama

Issei painter Koichi Nomiyama (1900-1984) was born in Kyushu, Japan to parents Hidetaro Nomiyama and Shima Akimoto, and immigrated to the United States on September 14, 1900, when he was twenty years old. He studied art at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1926, and participated in Sangenshoku Ga Kai exhibitions with fellow Issei artists Teikichi Hikoyama and Kiyoo Harry Nobuyuki in 1927. That same year, he began exhibiting regularly with the San Francisco Art Association, and had some of his oil paintings included in the inaugural exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art. ^[1] One of his paintings, "Man Holding Mandolin," was exhibited in the 1929 San Francisco Art Association exhibition and was later reproduced in the early Japanese American arts and literary anthology Ayumi , published in 1980. He was married to Tsuyeno Furuya in San Francisco in March 24, 1929.

In 1942, Nomiyama was incarcerated with his wife Tsuneyo at the Merced Assembly Center in California, and later at Amache , Colorado. With fellow artist Tokio Ueyama , he supervised the art department at the Amache camp that offered classes to inmates three times a day, three days a week. Additionally, he served on the Granada Pioneer newspaper's translation staff for a time.

Following his release in 1945, he moved to New York but sometime in the following decades, he returned to San Francisco with his wife. He continued to exhibit his oil paintings at San Francisco's Greta Williams gallery, and at shows like the Society of Western Artists' Annual, throughout the 50s and 60s.

After his wife Tsuneyo died in 1974, Nomiyama returned to Japan that same year. He died in Japan in September 1984. His cubist-influenced paintings, remarkable for their bold, rounded brushstrokes and dynamic use of color, are now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.