Chiura obata biography sample

Obata Chiura (小圃千浦 November 18, - October 6, ) was born Obata Zoroku in Okayama, Japan and grew up in Sendai.

He was raised by an older brother, Obata Rokuichi, a fifth-generation artist of the samurai class.

Chiura obata biography sample

Beginning at seven years of age, Obata studied painting in sumi (black ink: 墨) with the Sendai painter Moniwa Chikusen. By the age of fourteen, when he ran away from home to avoid military school, he apprenticed for about three years with the Tosa-school artist Murata Tanryô (; 邨田丹陵), and later with the Nihonga artist and printmaker Terazaki Kôgyô (; 寺崎広業) and Nihonga-style painter Gahô Hashimoto (; 橋本雅邦).

Obata also had training in Western-style painting, an influence that was to last his entire career. After taking the name Chiura ("Thousand Bays": 千浦) inspired by the landscape near Sendai, he emigrated first to Seattle and then to San Francisco in

During the s Obata devoted much of his ti