For more than 60 years, Sakoguchi has been working in the realm of historical painting; combining stark depictions of global events with critical humor, and translating dark episodes in our collective history into poignant vignettes. “Desastresde la Guerra / words & baseball” places Sakoguchi’s nuanced baseball and words paintings alongside the five suites which comprise the “Disasters of War” series–a modern age portrayal of Goya’s namesake etchings, which decried the cruelties and inhumanity of war. Born in 1938 to ethnically-Japanese (American) parents in San Bernardino, California, Sakoguchi’s childhood exposed him to the injustices of US internment camps and later to the captivating visuals of orange crate label marketing at the family grocery store. Sakoguchi’s approach is inarguably informed by his own personal history, confronting us with the persistent nature of war and brutality as it mutates into its modern form.
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Ben Sakoguchi was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1938. He lives and works in Pasadena, California. He earned both his BA (1960) and MFA (1964) from UCLA, and went on to teach at Pasadena City College from 1964 until 1997. His artwork has been shown internationally and is held in the collections of major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hammer Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Cantor Art Center at Stanford, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Perez Art Museum in Miami, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
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