[Fukuoka] Hideo Benjamin NODA Exhibition - May25 [Sat] - June 9 [Sun], 2019

[Fukuoka Gallery]

The 80th Anniversary of the Death
Hideo Benjamin NODA Exhibition
May25 [Sat] - June 9 [Sun], 2019

Through his artworks, Hideo Noda warmly looked at joy and sorrow of the common people’s life in
American cities in economic crisis of the 1930s.
1932, the year he painted “Sudden rain (Woodstock, New York) ”, was the most productive time for Noda
as an artist. He was strongly influenced by Yasuo Kuniyoshi and George Grosz after he moved from
California to The Woodstock Art Colony in a suburb of New York. It was also around this time when he
met and married Ruth Kates, his destined soul mate.In 1933, he painted the walls of the Rockefeller Center as an assistant of Diego Rivera together with Ben Shahn. He kept on working actively until he ended his short life of thirty years. Our exhibition will show 28 of his artworks including a number of sketches. We also display “ Scottsboro Boys”, a work dealing with the problem of racism that will be exhibited in “Mexican Muralism and Art in the United States, 1920-1950” at Whitney Museum in 2020. Please visit us to see his artworks.

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.