Taro Yamamoto

Colorful Abstract Mixed Media on Paper

1953

Taro Yamamoto was a member of the New York Abstract Expressionist School. Born in California in 1919, he returned to Japan until the age of 19 to receive a traditional Japanese education. Already exhibiting great promise as an artist at a young age, he enrolled in Los Angeles City College upon his return. He served in the Second World War from 1941–46, after which he continued his art studies at Santa Monica College and then, New York City. It was at the famous Art Students League in New York that Yamamoto had the opportunity to study with Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor, Vaclav Vytlacil and Byron Browne. His talent was well-recognized as he was awarded a scholarship to the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in 1952 and a traveling fellowship to Europe in 1953. Yamamoto eventually settled with his wife and son in the art colony of Wellfleet on Cape Cod where he died in 1994. During Yamamoto's most prolific period in the 50s and early 60s he had solo exhibitions at the Gallerie Huit in Paris, the Art Students League and Krasner Gallery in New York and Gallery 371 in Provincetown, Massachusetts.