Harmony

Harmony is the third and final watercolor in a series made by Chiura Obata in response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Pale greens and yellows, painted with small, repetitive brushstrokes, form a central section of this composition, breaking up the otherwise black, tan, and orange landscape. Diagonal strokes of white and gray depict rain washing over the landscape to cleanse it of the destructive atomic damage and to help start a process of renewed growth. To the left, on a hill, is a simple, dilapidated wooden house. In front are two figures, familiar from the first two compositions. Tiny and effaced by nature, they stand with hands clasped as if to contemplate the rebirth of the land. The pale green grass is fragile yet visible. This picture expresses the artist’s hope that nature could return despite the atomic destruction wrought by the US military, and that the world might again find harmony after the war.

Obata painted this watercolor more delicately than Devastation (TF 2023.1) and Prayer (TF 2023.2), the first two works in the series, which are also in the Terra Foundation collection. The series conveys Obata’s lifelong belief in the power of nature and the natural cycles of death and rebirth. In 1946, the artist included the three watercolors in an exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley, where he resumed teaching after his internment during the war.

University of California, Berkeley, Haviland Hall, Exhibition of Chiura Obata, June 1946.

  Bearing Witness: Selected Works by Chiura Obata, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, October 20, 2022–February 27, 2023.

Chiura Obata. An American Modern, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of Santa Barbara (organizer). Venues: Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of Santa Barbara, January 13–April 29, 2018; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 25–September 2, 2018; Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan, January 18–March 10, 2019; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, June 23–September 29, 2019; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., November 2019–April 2020. [exh. cat.]

Ruchti, Bill. “Art Exhibit in Oriental Vein Displayed Here,” Daily Californian, June 6, 1946.

Hill, Kim Kodani. Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000. Devastation, ill. p. 134 (color); Prayer, ill. p. 135 (color); Harmony, ill. p. 136 (color).

Wang, ShiPu. Chiura Obata: An American Modern. Oakland, CA: University of California Press in association with Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018. Devastation ill. p. 112 (color); Prayer, ill. p. 115 (color); Harmony, ill. p. 115 (color).