Overview

Born in Waipahu, Hawaii, Tetsuo Ochikubo was a Japanese-American Abstract Expressionist painter, sculptor, and printmaker. Ochikubo served in combat during World War II, and shortly after his discharge from the Army he began to study painting and design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, later moving on to the Art Students League of New York. He lived and worked in Long Island and Syracuse, New York. In the 1960s, he worked at the Tamarind Institute, a non-profit lithography workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico; upon his return, he taught at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Best known for his abstract paintings and lithographs, Ochikubo was a member of the Metcalf Chateau, a group of seven Asian-American artists with ties to Honolulu. Other members included Satoru Abe, Bumpei Akaji, Edmund Chung, Jerry T. Okimoto, James Park, and Tadashi Sato. These artists were all Hawaiian-born modernists who considered themselves nisei (second generation) of Japanese descent, and they derived their name from a house on Metcalf Street in Honolulu, where they exhibited in the early 1950s. Ochikubo, a lover of nature in all its forms, died tragically in a diving accident in Hilo in 1975 at the age of 51.