“I have no place to take myself except painting.” – Miyoko Ito, 1978.
Miyoko Ito (1918–1983) was a Japanese American painter, born in Berkeley, California, and was active in Chicago where she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
When the World War II began in 1941 in the United States with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ito was studying art at University of California, Berkeley. She was a senior scheduled to graduate in May 1942. In April 1942, Ito married Harry Ichiyasu to avoid being separated during the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Her husband was president of the senior class of the Japanese constituency at UC Berkeley. They were married on April 11th, but by the end of April they were sent to Tanforan internment camp near San Francisco, and later sent to Topaz under an Executive Order signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ito received her diploma while she was in the internment camp, then received a grant to attend a graduate program at Smith College. She stayed there for one year before going on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. Ito said she cried when she opened her diploma. She graduated with highest honors.
Miyoko Ito was hardly unknown during her lifetime, though she gained some attention and was granted residency fellowships at MacDowell in New Hampshire. It was there that she experienced “the meaning of full expression in the conductive environment,” she wrote in her “Plan of Work” in 1983. She continued, “I would like to escape the heretofore stifling condition of low ceiling, dim daylight, and inadequate floor space” of her bedroom studio in her house.
This publication, “Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts” is the first book dedicated to the life and work of Miyoko Ito, long overdue for this artist.
