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The Ascent

Photo: Paul Macapia

The Ascent

1950

George Tsutakawa

born 1910, Seattle, Washington; died 1997 Seattle

When he was seven years old, Seattle-born Tsutakawa went to live with his highly cultivated maternal grandparents in Fukuyama, Japan. Under their tutelage, he learned the traditional arts of Kabuki and Noh drama, ikebana (the art of flower arrangement), tea ceremony, and calligraphy. When he returned to the United States as a teenager, he enrolled at the University of Washington to study painting with Walter Isaacs, Ambrose Patterson, and visiting professor Alexander Archipenko. After serving in the army during World War II, he re-entered the university with the help of the G.I. Bill and earned his MFA in sculpture and a place on the faculty. He taught art and architecture there for three decades.

Although best known for his sculpture and his many public fountains, Tsutakawa began his career as a painter. In examples such as this one—as well as The Descent, hanging nearby—he brought his early education in Japanese calligraphy to the flattened perspective, interlocking forms, and uninhibited line he absorbed from his later training in American modernism.
Oil on canvas board
21 x 30 in. (53.34 x 76.2 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Dwight E. Robinson
54.153
Photo: Paul Macapia
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryTuscon, Arizona, Tuscon Fine Arts Center, Pacific Coast Painting, 1957.

Port Townsend, Washington, Annual Art Festival, 1961.

Seattle, Washington, Gethsemane Lutheran Church Synod Convention, 1961.

Bellevue, Washington, Bellevue Art Museum, Eternal Laughter: A Sixty-year Retrospective of the Work of George Tsutakawa, Sept. 15- Nov. 2, 1990.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, International Abstraction: Making Painting Real, May 2, 2003 - Feb. 29, 2004.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Modernism: Four Japanese Americans, Mar. 20, 2021 - June 5, 2022.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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