(1924 - 2017)

Masatoyo Kishi graduated from the Tokyo University of Science in 1953 with degrees in Physics and Mathematics. After a short career as a mathematics teacher, Kishi began exhibiting with Tekkei Kai, a group of abstract painters affiliated with the Kyoto Museum of Art. He said, “As a Japanese artist in the 1950s in Tokyo, I didn't go to art school. Japanese artists studied literature, economics, science; then you explored art." In 1960 Kishi moved from Japan to San Francisco, where he showed with the Bolles Gallery and also taught at Holy Names College in Oakland and Dominican College in San Rafael.

Kishi’s work is included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Oakland Museum of California; and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. In 1997 his work was featured in the exhibition, Asian Traditions, Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction, 1945-1970 at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Jersey, which traveled to Chicago and Los Angeles.