Robert Yasuda

The quiet complexity of form and meaning are a trademark of Yasuda’s signature paintings. They are meditative paintings, which create a depth of space that allows the viewer to visually move within the painting itself.

The paintings are not static. The slow revelation of the true nature of the paintings are brought about by its relationship to various light sources, so the paintings remain active in their relationship to changes in day and night and to the viewers movements and ever changing eye. Yasuda’s paintings are painted on wood, sometimes multi-paneled, which are often carved, shaped, and modified to enhance the physical presence of the image, and then covered with very fine fabric, many transparent and translucent layers of mediums and pigments applied to make up the final color, then varnishes creating a very light active surface.

Nearly twenty years ago, the artist began incorporating frame elements into his works. For Yasuda the elements function in several different ways and have come to play an important role in his process. The frames may serve as a lintel, a gate, a bridge, a hanging bar, or as an “incomplete frame” which surrounds the painting on three sides, or two or one, and re-enforces the way the painting should be experienced.

In addition to this work, in 1975 Yasuda completed his first of many large-scale wall painting installations at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City. He then went on to mount installations at The Clocktower, PS 1 MOMA and The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage in New York City, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Corcoran Museum of Art, Wahington DC, The Bayou Exhibition, Houston Texas, William Paterson College, New Jersey, Freedman Gallery, Albright College Reading Pennsylvania, Hoshour Gallery, Albuquerque New Mexico, and the Thomas Babeor Gallery, San Diego, California.

Yasuda was born in Hawaii in 1940, moved to New York City in the late 50’s and continues to live and work there. First exhibiting in 1965, Yasuda has had 30 solo exhibitions internationally, and over 80 group exhibitions to date. He has received a National Endowment to the Arts award, The John Hay Whitney Grant,a purchase award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has work is in the collections of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut; The McNay Museum,San Antonio Texas, The Bass Museum, Miami Florida; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; and others.