Ralph Iwamoto

Art Brokerage: Ralph Iwamoto American Artist: b. 1927-2013. Ralph Iwamoto came to New York in 1948 on the GI Bill to study at the Art Students League. Raised in Hawaii in a family of Japanese heritage, Iwamoto served in the US Army from 1946 to 1946 as a translator in Japan. Iwamoto first worked in organic forms, muted colors, and elements from traditional Japanese art. His first exhibition in New York was alongside Alfred Leslie and Louise Nevelson at Rugina Gallery in 1955. His work was included in the 1958 Whitney Museum of American Art Annual. In 1957 Ralph Iwamoto learned the Museum of Modern Art was hiring additional guards for an upcoming Picasso exhibition. He got the job and was able to spend hours looking at Picasso's work. While at MoMA, Iwamoto met fellow guards Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Ryman. He remained close friends with these Minimalists and worked on some of LeWitt's early wall drawings. Perhaps an influence of his MoMA friends, Ralph Iwamoto's work became more geometric in the 1960s, including a series of shaped canvases from 1965 to 1968. In these works, the canvas edge is activated by arrangements of right-angled lines that move the viewer's eye around the boundaries of the shaped canvas. In the 1970s Ralph Iwamoto worked in minimal colors and permutations of compositions made up of octagons. Iwamoto's first series he called QuarOctagon, four octagons set in a square. Listings wanted.