Tadashi Sato

Who was Tadashi Sato?

Tadashi Sato was an American artist. He was born in Kaupakalua on the Hawaiian island of Maui. His father had been a pineapple laborer, merchant, and calligrapher, and Tadashi’s grandfather was a sumi-e artist.

In childhood, Tadashi studied Japanese sumi ink and calligraphy. He served in the Army in the Pacific during World War II and went on to attend Cannon School of Business in Honolulu. He then pursued his interest in art at the Honolulu Museum of Art. In 1948 he went to New York to study at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, Pratt Institute and the New York School for Social Research.

Sato's break came while he was working as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A friend, who had been working as a movie extra, introduced him to actors Charles Laughton and Burgess Meredith, who were both art collectors. They visited Sato’s apartment and bought several paintings. Sato promptly called his boss at the museum to resign.

Between 1950 and 1960, he traveled back and forth between New York and Hawaii, exhibiting both in Hawaii and on the mainland. In 1960, Tadashi, his wife Kiyoko and two children returned to the islands. In 1965 Sato was honored by President Lyndon Johnson at the White House Festival of Arts, alongside Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and other American artists. From 1960 until his death in 2005, he lived in Maui. Along with Satoru Abe, Bumpei Akaji, Edmund Chung, Tetsuo Ochikubo, Jerry T. Okimoto, and James Park, Tadashi Sato was a member of the Metcalf Chateau, a group of seven Asian-American artists with ties to Honolulu.