Answer: Chiura Obata (1885–1975) ranks among the most significant California-based artists and Japanese American cultural leaders of the 20th century. Best known for his majestic views of the American West, Obata brought a distinctive trans-Pacific style to the arts community of California as an artist and teacher. The major traveling retrospective “Chiura Obata: American Modern” presents the most comprehensive survey to date of his acclaimed and varied body of work, from bold landscape paintings of the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park to intimate drawings of his experiences of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.