[Tokyo] Hideo Benjamin NODA Exhibition - October6 [Sat] - 21 [Sun], 2018 -

[Tokyo Gallery]
Hideo Benjamin NODA Exhibition
October6 [Sat] - 21 [Sun], 2018

The Scottsboro Boys - A false accident arrested 9 African American teenagers, ages 13 to 20 in Alabama of raping two White American women on a train in 1931. It made public opinion as an incident reflecting the problem of racial discrimination in America. Hideo NODA also known as Hideo Benjamin NODA criticized American society pessimistically, with repeated African American teenagers in his own circumstances that was subject to persecution and exclusion as a Japanese-American artist.

This work titled `The Scottsboro Boys’ will be exhibited for the exhibition of Mexican Muralism and Art in the United States, 1920-1950 at Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) in 2020.

In the economic crisis of the 1930s, Hideo NODA developed his painting style of looking gently over his kindness, focusing on people’s emotions living in cities in the United States.

In 1933, he joined with Ben Shahn, Jackson Pollock and others as assistant of Diego Rivera who made mural of the Rockefeller Center. He ran through a short lifetime of 30 years. In this exhibition, 27 works mainly drawings will be exhibited. We do hope you will be able to have a look.



Hideo NODA / born in Santa Clara, California, 1908. In 1911, he was left at uncle’s house in Kumamoto where his parents originally from. In 1926, after graduating from Kumamoto prefectural junior high school, he travelled alone to the United States. In 1929, attended the California School of Fine Arts. He met Diego Rivera and moved to Woodstock Art Village (New York) in 1931. His painting `Street Scene' was purchased by Whitney Museum of American Art in 1934. In 1937, he traveled to Paris, Rome and other cities, after that returned to Japan. 1938, he moved to Genichiro INOKUMA’s absence house in Denenchofu, Tokyo. He was sick and hospitalized while staying on the shore of Nojiri Lake in Nagano prefecture. A brain tumor ended his life on Jan. 12, 1939 at the age of 30 in Tokyo.