Details

Chiura Obata’s Autumn in Berkeley is a masterfully composed watercolor from around 1935, balancing the elegance of natural form with the presence of the modern world. The scene is unmistakably Californian—cool morning light filters through a canopy shedding its leaves onto a quiet street corner. Yet amid this lyrical rendering of seasonal change, a striking symbol of modern life occupies the center: a deep blue automobile, its curving contours harmonized into the rhythm of Obata’s brushwork.

The architecture, trees, and softly winding street all retain Obata’s characteristic lightness—shaped with transparent washes and feathered edges. But it is the car that defines the composition’s center of gravity, anchoring a tableau that would otherwise dissolve into breeze and shadow. Far from an incidental detail, the car reflects Obata’s engagement with his adopted environment, capturing the texture of daily life in a rapidly modernizing Berkeley.

Connoisseur's Note

Chiura Obata (1885–1975) stands as one of the rare artists who could fluidly translate the principles of Japanese art into the visual language of modern America. Having immigrated from Japan in 1903, Obata became a devoted chronicler of the American West—not just its mountains and wilderness, but its cities, neighborhoods, and signs of human presence. This work, created during his years teaching at UC Berkeley, underscores that commitment. It reveals a modernist sensibility—not only in subject matter, but in structure: the car’s sleek lines echo the sinuous trunk of the tree beside it, both rendered with formal economy and grace.

In Autumn in Berkeley, we sense Obata’s quiet delight in contrasts: between nature and structure, season and permanence, movement and stillness. The maple’s autumnal reds echo across the sidewalk in windswept patterns, while the car rests poised in its curve of road—an emblem not only of contemporary life but of Obata’s evolving artistic perspective. Where traditional Japanese aesthetics meet the everyday tempo of 1930s California, Obata offers us not nostalgia, but a poetic modernism, keenly attuned to place and moment.