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Biography

Robert Yasuda is known for luminous multi-panel paintings on carved wood that transmit and transform light. Notable installations include large, site-specific paintings at MoMA PS1 in an exhibition organized by Alanna Heiss in 2016. The exhibition, titled Forty, was a collection of work by artists who were key participants in the 1970s alternative art spaces movement and the early years of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. During the 1970s, Yasuda’s work was showcased at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Clocktower Gallery, New York; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Early gallery exhibitions include solo shows at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger (Zurich and St. Moritz), 1968 and 1969, and in 1975, the first of five shows at Betty Parsons Gallery, New York.

 

Robert Yasuda was born in Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii in 1940. He spent his childhood in rural Hawaii before attending high school in Honolulu, where exposure to museums, concerts and television influenced his decision to become an artist. In 1958, he moved to New York City to study art at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, completing a BFA and MFA and immersing himself in the work of New York School artists. He developed and refined his techniques during this formative phase, but the influence of his childhood in Hawaii is palpable throughout his oeuvre. 

 

In 1962 Yasuda received a grant from the Whitney Foundation to travel and work in Europe which exposed him to the vast history of Western painting. Upon returning to New York he began creating multi-image abstract oil paintings. He came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s with experimental works that resisted traditional definitions of painting. Inspired by travels in India, Japan and Southeast Asia, he veered away from the Western notion of painting functioning like a window onto the world. Instead, he was drawn to Eastern approaches to picture-making and framing including Japanese scroll paintings and Chinese paintings resting on ornately carved stands. Having spent time shaping and sanding wood surfboards in his youth, he naturally gravitated toward working with wood and began experimenting with sheer fabric and acrylic paint on thick wooden boards, exploring themes of perception and light.

 

Over time, his work has evolved beyond formal minimalism toward more subjective and sensual work that seeks to visually convey moments of perception and insight, along with allusions to nature and his heritage, including impressions of Hawaii and his childhood encounters with Buddhism

 

Yasuda has been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two purchase awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The New York Public Library; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; The Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, among others.

 

Yasuda works and lives in New York City and Sugarloaf Key, Florida.

The New Yorker
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The New Yorker
Forty July 12, 2016

A review of Forty, curated by Alanna Heiss, at MoMA PS1, featuring work by STG artist Robert Yasuda.

ARTnews
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ARTnews
Review: Robert Yasuda June 2014

Longtime abstract painter Robert Yasuda's newest works verge on the lush, with an expanded palette, richer surface tonalities, and contours that are increasingly undulant, offering a more nuanced and fluid visual experience.

Blouin Artinfo
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Blouin Artinfo
Video Interview with Robert Yasuda February 2014

Artist Robert Yasuda talks with Blouin Artinfo about the work in his new exhibition, Make Haste Slowly.

Orientations
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Orientations
Asia Week New York March 2011

Sundaram Tagore Gallery will present a group exhibition, "Facing East’, of works that transcend cultural boundaries while reflecting Eastern elements. The show represents artists of Korean, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Uzbeki-Israeli origins. These works define an aesthetic language of East-West dialogue, featuring artists Kim Joon, Nathan Slate Joseph, Sohan Qadri, Hiroshi Senju, Robert Yasuda, Nhat Tran, Amina Ahmed, and Taylor Kuffner. Through their works, these artists struggle to create a sense of beauty that is universal through a wide range of mediums.

Art News
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Art News
Robert Yasuda September 2010

"Yasuda's paintings are like shields or tablets awaiting a future generation to record its history on them."

South China Morning Post
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South China Morning Post
Preview: Here and Now at Sundaram Tagore Gallery March 2009

Art historian Sundaram Tagore's doctoral thesis looks at Indian artists' response to European modernisation from the 1940s to 1980s. As a curator, however, his focus is more on the here and now. Hence the title of his gallery's latest group exhibition by 18 international artists, which opens today at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery's Hong Kong branch.

South China Morning Post
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South China Morning Post
City Reviews: In your Mind's Eye; Sundaram Tagore Gallery October 28, 2008

"...Less-colour-saturated but no less intuitive are the pieces by Natvar Bhavsar, who sprinkles pigment delicately on his canvases in an echo of Jackson Pollock, although the works' understated quality reflects a gentle Asian sensibility that's the opposite of the American painter's frenetic, ego-driven style..."

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