Skip Ribbon Commands
Skip to main content
Seattle Art Museum (SAM)
menu
Skip Navigation Linksvisit

Bridge

1931

Kamekichi Tokita

American (born in Japan), 1897–1948

Tokita famously said his artistic aims were “found in Cézanne and . . . developed through the methods used by Sesshu.” This highly innovative composition can be said to bear the mark of these two paradigms of the European and Asian traditions. A close view of the network of trusses and stairways that define Seat­­tle’s infrastructure of bridges, it demonstrates the artist’s understanding of Cézanne’s forms and volumes and Sesshu’s intricacies of line.
Oil on canvas
23 1/4 x 19 1/16 in. (59.1 x 48.4 cm)
Gift of the artist
33.230
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Art Institute of Seattle, 17th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, Sept. 23 - Nov. 1, 1931.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Oil Paintings by Seattle Artists, June 28 - July 31, 1933.

Puyallup, Washington, Western Washington Fair, Contemporary American Painting, 1941.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The View From Here: The Pacific Northwest 1800-1930, Aug. 8, 2003 - Feb. 29, 2004.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Painting Seattle: Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura, Oct. 22, 2011 - Feb. 19, 2012.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Modernism: Four Japanese Americans, Mar. 20, 2021 - June 5, 2022.
Published ReferencesQuarterly Bulletin of Art Institute of Seattle, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1931, reproduced p. 7.

Callahan, Kenneth. "The Art Situation; Paintings reflect region." Town Crier, October 21, 1933: pp. 9-10.

Fuller, Richard E. "Some Facts Apropos...," Town Crier, June 24, 1933, reproduced p. 6.

Johns, Barbara. Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita, in association with Painting Seattle: Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2011; pp. 88-89, reproduced fig. 68.

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.

Learn more about Equity at SAM