Masami Teraoka is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 contemporary artist. His work includes ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

-influced woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s and paintings.

Life

Teraoka was born in the town of Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture

Hiroshima Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region on Honshu island. The capital is the city of Hiroshima.- History :The area around Hiroshima was formerly divided into Bingo Province and Aki Province. This location has been a center of trade and culture since the beginning of Japan's recorded...

. He studied from 1954-59 at the Kwansei Gakuin University

Kwansei Gakuin University

, colloquially abbreviated to , is a non-denominational Christian private and coeducational university located in Nishinomiya, Sanda, Osaka City, and Tokyo, Japan....

 in Kobe

Kobe

, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...

, Japan where he received his B.A. in Aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

. He moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1961 and from 1964-68 attended the Otis Art Institute now the Otis College of Art and Design

Otis College of Art and Design

Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...

 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, where he received a B.F.A. and M.F.A. Masami's wife Lynda Hess is also a painter.

Work

His early work consisted primarily of watercolor paintings and prints that mimicked the flat, bold qualities of ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

 woodblock prints. These paintings, done after his arrival in the United States, often featured the collision of the two cultures. Series such as McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan and 31 Flavors Invading Japan characterize themes in the work in this time period. These pieces blended reality with fantasy, humor with commentary, history with the present.

In the 1980s, Teraoka shifted palette and scale to depict AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 as a subject, transforming his ukiyo-e derived paintings into a darker realm. Since the late 1990s, he has been producing large-scale narrative paintings addressing social and political issues, especially abuse in the Catholic Church. These large-scale paintings are inspired by well-known Renaissance paintings, rather than by Japanese woodblock prints.

Teraoka has been the subject of more than 70 solo exhibitions, many of which have traveled extensively, including those organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 in 1980; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu

The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu

The now defunct Contemporary Museum, Honolulu was the only museum in the state of Hawaii devoted exclusively to contemporary art. The Contemporary Museum had two venues: in residential Honolulu at the historic Spalding House, and downtown Honolulu at First Hawaiian Center.-Collection:Artists...

 in 1988; and the Yale University Art Gallery

Yale University Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the Gallery possesses especially renowned collections of early Italian painting,...

 in 1998. Also in 1996 he was featured in a solo exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery joins the Freer Gallery of Art to form the Smithsonian Institution's national museums of Asian art. The Sackler celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2012....

 and in 1997 at the Asian Art Museum

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a museum in San Francisco, California, United States. It has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world....

, San Francisco.

His work is in more than 50 public collections worldwide, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in California.-External...

; the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...

, Washington D. C.; the Honolulu Academy of Arts

Honolulu Academy of Arts

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is an art museum in Honolulu in the state of Hawaii. Since its founding in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and opening April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to over 40,000 works of art.-Description:...

, Hawaii; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

; the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, New York; the National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery (United States)

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in Washington, D.C., administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of famous individual Americans.-Building:...

, Washington D. C.; Tate Modern

Tate Modern

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...

, London, England; the Queensland Art Gallery

Queensland Art Gallery

The Queensland Art Gallery is part of the Queensland Cultural Centre, and is located nearest to Brisbane River at South Bank...

/GOMA, Brisbane, Australia; the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland; and the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore. Masami Teraoka has twice been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York and received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

. The first comprehensive monograph on the artist was published in 2007.

Masami Teraoka has given lectures at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, the Asian Art Society, the Institute of Fine Arts/NYU, and Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, among many others, and has received a number of grants and awards. He has also completed numerous commissioned pieces, including a painting, Samurai Businessmen for the cover of TIME Magazine, and Green Rabbit Island for the State Foundation for the Arts and Culture, Honolulu

Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. Honolulu is the southernmost major U.S. city. Although the name "Honolulu" refers to the urban area on the southeastern shore of the island of Oahu, the city and county government are consolidated as the City and...

, Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

.He is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery

Catharine Clark Gallery

Established in 1991, Catharine Clark Gallery presents the work of contemporary, living artists using a variety of media. The gallery is located in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Neighborhood; it is adjacent to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and is housed on...

in San Francisco since 1997 and Samuel Freeman in Los Angeles.

Forthcoming exhibitions include:

Fall 2010 September 25 - November 6, 2010. Solo Exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California

Fall 2011 Solo Exhibition at Samuel Freeman, Los Angeles, California

Fall 2012 East of Eden, West of Hell. Solo exhibition curated by Theresa Papanikolas at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii

Solo Exhibition at the Mizuma and One-Gallery, Beijing, China (date unconfirmed)