The Art Gallery at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is proud to present “Tadashi Sato: Atomic Abstraction in the Fiftieth State, 1954–1963.”

This exhibition examines the work of Tadashi Sato (1923–2005), one of the most significant and visible Hawaiʻi-born painters of the twentieth century. From early Precisionist-mentored studies celebrating urban life during the 1940s, to luminous large-scale abstract canvases of the 1950s, to monumental public art commissions, the show looks at Sato as an artist whose painting sprang from post-war aspirations towards modernity and democracy and whose unique position as a Japanese-American veteran born in Hawaiʻi gives us a greater understanding of the complexities of American identity during a decade of intense cultural change and transition. The first major exhibition of Sato’s works in over twenty years, the show features never-before-seen artworks and archival materials to demonstrate that Sato’s painting was the site of significant and ongoing public conversations in Hawaiʻi pitting abstraction against representation, debating the value of public art, and speculating on who audiences would be for art in the new state of Hawaiʻi.