The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, marked annually on April 18, is often overshadowed by its impact. Chiura Obata, a young artist, documented the disaster and its aftermath in his sketches. The Asian Art Museum's 2022 exhibit, 'Bearing Witness: Selected Works by Chiura Obata,' features his watercolors that illustrate the physical destruction and the struggles of Chinese and Japanese Americans who lived in makeshift camps post-quake. Obata's firsthand observations offer a poignant look at both personal and collective trauma in a significant historical moment.
Obata observed first-hand the tragedy of the earthquake and subsequent fire. His images document the tragic property loss in the heart of the city, but perhaps more importantly, he documents the plight of the Chinese and Japanese Americans who survived in makeshift camps set up in the East Bay.
The watercolors in this series begin on April 25, exactly a week after the earthquake and three days after the raging fires subsided. Binding holes across the top of the paper show that the pages were once part of a sketchbook - perhaps the same one Obata grabbed on the morning of the earthquake, when the twenty-year-old artist fled his wrecked lodgings on Leavenworth Street.
Collection
[
|
...
]