Nevadaville (Primary Title)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, American (born Japan), 1889 - 1953 (Artist)
Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi established his reputation as a leading modernist in the 1920s New York art world with images of popular amusements. Nevadaville is an example of his later imagery, marked by a somber and symbolic tone. Painted soon after the start of World War II, it depicts a western ghost town – the kind of “deserted place” the artist found himself drawn to in those turbulent years. Whereas the painting’s imagery may have originated from Kuniyoshi’s 1941 travels through California, Nevada, and Colorado, its bleak and desolate quality reverberates with wartime tensions.
In 1947, Kuniyoshi described World War II as “the backdrop for a great number of works. Not necessarily the battlefield, but the war’s implications: destruction, lifelessness, hovering between life and death, loneliness.” Nevadaville, which VMFA purchased from its 1944 exhibition of contemporary art, manifests these “implications of very sad things” as it evokes the artist’s feelings of personal displacement.
Art of the 30’s, Artmobile, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va., January 1980 – June 1981
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, The Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Norfolk, Va., September 7 – October 1, 1978
Yasuo Kuniyoshi Retrospective, University of Texas Art Museum, Austin, TX, February 9 – March 23, 1975; Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, April 13 – May 18, 1965; Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, June 8 – July 13, 1975; Aichi Cultural Center, Nagoya, Japan, August 8 – 29, 1975; Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo, Japan, September 8 – 28, 1975; Hyogo Municipal Museum of Modern Art, Kobe, Japan, November 3 – December 20, 1975; Windsor Art Gallery, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, January 4 – February 8, 1976
[No Title], Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Va., November 7, 1957 – January 1958
Kuniyoshi, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan, March 20 – April 25, 1954; Municipal Gallery, Osaka, May 1 – 23, 1954; Tenmondo Gallery, Nagoya, May 28 – June 6, 1954
Special Loan Exhibition, Hollins College, Roanoke, Va., December 5 – 22, 1952; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., January 5 – February 3, 1953; Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Va., May 6 – 20, 1953
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 27 – May 9, 1948
[No title], The Bayly Museum, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, January 1947
The Fourth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va., March 18 – April 16, 1944
Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.