1925-1990

EMIKO NAKANO (1925 - 1990)

During World War II, Emiko Nakano and her family were interned at Merced Assembly Center, in California, and Granada War Relocation Center (Camp Amache), in Colorado, as were many other Japanese-Americans. After the war ended, she moved to Richmond, California, and studied at the California School of Fine Arts under Elmer Bischoff, Edward Corbett, Richard Diebenkorn, James Budd Dixon, Hassel Smith, and Clyfford Still (1947-51). In the summer of 1949, she studied with Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1952, she took classes at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Nakano supported herself primarily as a fashion illustrator as she pursued painting and printmaking. She was recognized for her accomplishments in various media, including oils, watercolors, and printmaking, and her artwork was represented at West Coast annuals and elsewhere during the 1950s.

-Edelman, Aliza. “Emily Nakano.” In Women of Abstract Expressionism, edited by Joan Marter, 187. New Haven, Connecticut and Denver, Colorado: Yale University Press in association with the Denver Art Museum, 2016.