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Little Joe with Cow

Artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889 - 1953)

Date1923

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions28 x 42 in. (71.1 x 106.7 cm)
Framed: 37 in. × 50 3/4 in. × 3 7/8 in.

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2010.108

Signedl.r.: Y. Kuniyoshi / 23

Accession number 2010.108

On View

On view

Collections

Fall

Provenance(Downtown Gallery, New York), by 1934. Wright S. Ludington [1900-1992], Santa Barbara, CA, by 1954. (Downtown Gallery, New York, NY); Edith Gregor Halpert [1900-1970], New York, NY; (Sotheby Parke-Bernet, Inc., New York, NY), March, 1-15, 1973, sale 3484, lot 83; purchased by (Nantenshi Gallery, Tokyo, Japan), 1973; Private Collection, Osaka, Japan, 1989; (Martha Parrish & James Reinish, Inc.); purchased by a private foundation for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2005
Label TextAccording to the Japanese calendar, Yasuo Kuniyoshi was born in the Year of the Cow. He painted numerous scenes of the animal, explaining, “I felt very near to the cow… According to legend, I believed my fate to be guided, more or less, by the bovine kingdom.” For his distinctive painting style, he drew from European Modernism (seen here in the distorted, unconventional perspective) and American folk art (evidenced by the flattened, simplified shapes of the boy’s head and body).

Según el calendario japonés, Yasuo Kuniyoshi nació en el Año de la Vaca. Pintó numerosas escenas con el animal y explicó: “Sentía una gran cercanía con la vaca… Según la leyenda, creía que mi destino estaba guiado, en cierta medida, por el reino bovino”. Para desarrollar su peculiar estilo pictórico, se inspiró en el Modernismo europeo (que se puede apreciar en la perspectiva distorsionada y poco convencional de esta obra) y en el arte popular estadounidense (evidenciado por las formas aplanadas y simplificadas de la cabeza y el cuerpo del niño).