Harry Kiyooka
Longtime Calgary artist Harry Kiyooka died peacefully in his sleep on Friday morning.
"We knew this was coming but it has devastated us nonetheless," said Deborah Herringer Kiss, owner of the Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary, which represents both Kiyooka and his partner, Katie Ohe, also a well-known artist.
"Katie has lost her partner in life and art, her constant companion, her moor," said Herringer Kiss.
A statement on the gallery's website said that Kiyooka had dedicated his life to Canada's art community.
"He was active not only as an artist, but as an educator, curator, collector, mentor, activist, administrator and philanthropist," it said.
Born in Calgary in 1928, to Japanese immigrant parents, Kiyooka spent his early life with his older brother, Roy, who died in 1994, in Calgary's working-class neighbourhood of Victoria Park.
Before he was 30, Kiyooka had earned four degrees, including a bachelor of education, a bachelor of fine arts, a master of art, and a master of fine arts, a remarkable accomplishment for a man whose family was uprooted as “enemy aliens” after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and left to tend a meagre farm north of Edmonton.
In 1958, Kiyooka went to Italy to study art. When he returned to Calgary in 1961, he began a teaching position at the new Calgary campus of the University of Alberta. He retired from the University of Calgary in 1988 after 27 years, and was given the rank of professor emeritus.
Over his long career as a painter and printmaker, Kiyooka also served on local, provincial, and national boards, including the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the Royal Canadian Academy, the Alberta Society of Artists, the Alberta Art Foundation, the Calgary Allied Arts Centre and the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation. He was a founding member of the Calgary Contemporary Arts Society, a life member of the Alberta Society of Artists and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.
In 1988, he received a 125th anniversary Medal of Confederation for his contribution to the community in establishing the Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts (now Contemporary Calgary) and, in 1996, the Award of Excellence from the Alberta College of Art and Design for his contributions to the visual arts.
In 2007, Kiyooka and Ohe founded the Kiyooka Ohe Arts Centre, a sustainable art-in-nature facility dedicated to the research, exhibition, education and documentation of contemporary art.
The gallery said it will hold a celebration of life for Kiyooka in coming weeks. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to further the work of the Kiyooka Ohe Arts Centre.
Source: Herringer Kiss Gallery
