Chiura Obata

Chiura Obata was a wellknown JapaneseAmerican artist and popular art teacher. A selfdescribed roughneck, Obata went to the United States in 1903, at age 17. After initially working as an illustrator and commercial decorator, he had a successful career as a painter, following a 1927 summer spent in the Sierra Nevada, and was a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1932 to 1954, interrupted by World War II, when he spent over a year in internment camps. After his retirement, he continued to paint and to lead group tours to Japan to see gardens and art.

Obata was born in 1885 in Okayama prefecture in Japan. He was the youngest of a very large family. At the age of five, he showed a natural inclination for drawing. He was then adopted by his older brother, Rokuichi, who was himself an artist. At the age of seven he began his formal training by a master painter in the art of sumie, Japanese ink and brush painting.

Source: Wikipedia