Kiuzo Furuya

Kiuzo Furuya

Furuya, Kiuzo

Kyuzo Furuya

Portland 1908 - 1929

San Francisco 1920 - 1929

painter

Northwest artist

Oregon artist

Kiuzo Furuya came to America in 1908. He began classes at the Museum Art School in 1918 and spent eleven years as a full or part-time student. In order to pay his tuition, Furuya worked at a variety of jobs--on a railroad section gang, as a salad maker in a restaurant, and as a reporter on the North America Times, a Japanese language newspaper. Every summer he took to the road and the mountains to paint. His devotion to nature had a profound influence on the young artist Charles Heaney. Furuya loved the mountains and spent many hours climbing them. He died in a sudden blizzard, falling into the very crevasse he had recently sketched. He left a cache of work at his base camp in care of a friend which was exhibited after his death. An oil, Still Life, and a watercolor, Mountains, are in the Portland Art Museum Collection.

Artist biography reproduced with permission from the authors, Oregon Painters: the First Hundred Years (1859-1959), Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit.

Associate of: Charles Heaney (American, 1897-1981)