Nakagawa, Kikuta (b. 1888)

We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. He exhibited his work at the Salons of America (1928), Chrysler Gallery (1932), and the Municipal Art Committee (1936). Ruth L. Benjamin described him as painting “portraits and still life, but seems to be at his best in landscape work” (Parnassus 7.5 [1935]: 15). He may have lived in Los Angeles beginning in the late 1930s. 2 more images at FAP.

Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Kikuta Nakagawa:

Featured
Flower Still Life
Flower Still Life

Groups of like flowers, often in threes, are gathered into a roughly symmetrical bouquet along its vertical axis. The planter has no visible pattern; the wallpaper behind is defined via colors instead of pattern. Judging from highlights upon the planter and a shadow at right, sunshine filtering in from the left is quite strong.

House on a Hill
House on a Hill

This scene at the edge of a forest is drawn using remarkably sparse details, for example a few brushstrokes evoking a vegetable garden, a house, or a hill. Much of Nakagawa’s attention has been devoted to dense and multicolored foliage at left and right—the only neighbors depicted here. The red object (or figure) in the woods isn’t clear. Sinuous unpainted and scraped lines are integral to the watercolor’s design.

nakagawaGVCA