Tadashi Sato is considered one of Hawaii’s most accomplished artists, whose abstract compositions of geometric shapes and images drawn from nature commands thousands of dollars. Sato was born in 1923 in Kaupakulua, Maui. When he was 8, he won a territory-wide poster contest. During World War II, he joined the U.S. Army, where he used his drawing skills as a cartographer stationed in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines. He returned to Hawaii in 1946 and was employed by Halekulani, who later purchased many of his paintings. Sato also attended classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and earned a scholarship for the Brooklyn Museum School in New York. He was encouraged by Ralston Crawford, an artist associated with the Precisionists, and Stuart Davis, a modernist painter. Sato’s works include oil on canvas, “Captain’s Chair”, and “Subway Station, New York, 1953-54-55”, a result of his fascination with the New York subway system. His first show was in 1958. His work would become more abstract in later years as Hawaii’s natural environment, especially the sea, increasingly became the subject of his art.
Composition by Tadashi Sato, 1988, Oil on Canvas
(located on the large wall on the right of the front desk as you are standing in front of the desk)
