On Exhibit: Ansei Uchima: Selections

Sarah Lawrence College’s Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center is pleased to announce exhibition reception of Ansei Uchima: Selections

March 24 – June 8, 2025 | Closing reception June 7, 5 p.m.

The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence is honored and excited to present the work of Ansei Uchima, a prolific artist, Japanese-American wood-block printmaker, and esteemed professor at Sarah Lawrence College for 20 years. Ansei Uchima: Selections focuses on displaying Uchima’s work as it spans his artistic career, with the earliest piece being Frosty Morn from 1962 and the latest piece being the oil painting Forest Byobu (Spring Blossom) from 1982. The majority of the Uchima’s works featured in the exhibition are executed in the traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking techniques and are inspired by the prints of the Ukiyo-e era. Additionally, three oil paintings and several of Uchima’s sketchbooks will be on view, offering a private insight into the artist’s thinking and art-making process.

Uchima’s work investigates abstraction with a carefully orchestrated symphony of colors and shapes, rooted in observations of the natural world. Variations of color form organic shapes and create an unexpected dimension and space, evoking landscapes and subtleties of atmospheric changes. While Uchima received training in Japanese technique, his early work very much responded to the abstract expressionist movement at the time, of which he expressed a fascination for its fluidity. It was the particular technique he used of hand-carving woodblocks and inking with watercolor that enhanced his explorations of transparency, color, tone, space, and form to produce a distinctive effect that pushed beyond abstract expressionist painting at the time. As Uchima’s investigation of abstraction expanded, he developed an interest in the contrast between objects and space, and the tension between movement and stillness, which his featured works from the mid-60s and 70s demonstrate. From 1977 and onwards, Uchima developed a signature style, in which his color mosaic technique expresses depth and volume by contrasting colors. He generates a swaying movement in these compositions, including his woodcut print Forest Byobu (Vermillion Blend) and the oil paintings Forest Byobu (Bamboo), Forest Byobu (Early Summer), and Forest Byobu (Spring Blossom). 

In addition to his practice, Uchima was a printmaking professor at Sarah Lawrence College for 20 years, beginning in 1962 not long after his move to New York City. Uchima was a professor who understood the needs and nurtured the skills of Sarah Lawrence students, being deeply involved in their development as artists and leaving lasting impressions on generations. In 1988 he was appointed as emeritus faculty at Sarah Lawrence. After Uchima retired from teaching, a retrospective show of his work was exhibited at Sarah Lawrence in 1985, honoring his legacy as an artist and a professor. In this second iteration, we commemorate the 25th anniversary of Ansei Uchima’s passing in May of 2000 and present his work to a new generation of Sarah Lawrence students.

Uchima was incredibly committed to Sarah Lawrence, continuing to generously donate many works to the College after his retirement. These works can be seen in several areas on campus, including the Esther Raushenbush Library, the President’s house, Andrew’s Annex, and several faculty offices. Now, 43 years after his retirement, Uchima’s work is still a significant part of Sarah Lawrence’s cultural fabric. Sarah Lawrence is one among many major institutions that hold his work in their prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and many others. We are so proud, that because of Uchima’s immense generosity, we can display his work on campus and have the opportunity to honor him through this exhibition. 

written by Piper McConnell, '26

Ansei Uchima (1921-2000) was a Japanese-American woodblock printmaker, painter and educator born in Stockton, CA. Uchima had solo exhibitions at Yoseido Gallery, Associated American Artists Gallery, Pratt Graphic Art Center, Susan Teller Gallery, Toki-no-Wasuremono Gallery, Tokyo, The Japan Society, Honolulu Museum of Art, Sarah Lawrence College Gallery and Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Japan. Ansei Uchima was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, 1962 and 1970. He participated in international bienniales, including those in Venice and Grenchen. Uchima’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, British Museum, Rijksmuseum and National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Most recently, a number of works by Ansei and Toshiko Uchima were displayed in an exhibition in New York, Creative Connections: Sōsaku Hanga Artists and New York at Scholten Japanese Art. Uchima was a member of the visual arts faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, teaching printmaking (1962-1982) and Columbia University (1968-1982). He was appointed to Sarah Lawrence College’s emeritus faculty in 1988. In 2026, a large traveling retrospective show of the work of both Ansei and Toshiko Uchima will be held at three museums in Japan at Hayama (Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art), Hekinan (Fujii Tatsukichi Museum of Contemporary Art) and Urawa (Museum of Modern Art, Saitama).