Hideo Date

In 1923, Hideo Date immigrated to the U.S., joining his family in Fresno, California. His artistic training initially began with a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute (1928) but, upon disagreements with his instructors, moved to the Kawabata School in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied Nihonga (1929-30). When Date returned to Los Angeles in 1930, he fully embraced the city’s diverse art scene: in the following decade, Date was a member of the Independents, studied with Stanton Macdonald-Wright and the Los Angeles Art Students League, worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and formed the Los Angeles Oriental Artists Group with Tyrus Wong, Benji Okubo, and Gilbert Leung. Despite running an art school and continuing to paint during his incarceration at Heart Mountain, Wyoming (1942-45), Date’s career as an artist never fully recovered after WWII and his subsequent relocation to New York, New York, in 1945. His work received renewed attention in the late 1990s after the bequest of his paintings to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and subsequent exhibition and publication (2001-2002), organized by the late curator and art historian Karin Higa.

Authored by Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art, 2025.