Night Flower I

Kenjilo Nanao

Kenjilo "Kenji" Nanao depicts a seed pod with a flower growing through a crack in the dark. It glows with light from an unknown source. It brings to mind Leonard Cohen's lyrics from 'Anthem': "Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything) / That's how the light gets in."

Nanao builds his luminous image on a printed black background and blue, printed tusche washes that shimmer over the surface like the milky way.

Kenjilo Nanao first became known for his delicate, surreal, and sometimes sensuous lithographic still-lifes with finely graded grounds of color, reminiscent of Japanese Shunga prints. Although lithography had been his medium of choice since his student days with Nathan Oliveira, in the early eighties he began to focus more attention on painting.

Kenjilo (Kenji) Nanao was born in Aomori, Japan on July 26, 1929. He studied at the Asagaya Art Academy from 1948 to 1951, but changed his course to pursue economics at Nihon University, graduating in 1953. Another shift in focus led him to the U.S. in 1960 to study at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Insititute), graduating in 1963 with a degree from the graphics department. He then earned his MFA in 1971 at the San Francisco Art Institute under Nathan Oliveira, among others.

His first passion was printmaking, particularly lithography, and soon he became known for his subtly surreal works featuring everyday objects set against finely graded grounds of color. After exposure to Diebenkorn and other respected Bay Area artists, he soon delved into painting. In this medium he broke away from surrealism, pursuing Abstract Expressionist composition, with large format paintings in his siganture gradient tones. By the 1980s he focused almost exclusively on the medium and, along with painterly monotype printmaking, continued to work until his death in 2013.

Nanao lectured at San Jose State University in 1970, and was a professor of art at California State University at Hayward from 1970 until 1991, when he became Professor Emeritus. He was a visiting professor at University New Hampshire (1973 and Stanford University (1992). In 1965 he married fellow student of Oliveira, painter Gail Chadell.