The United Gas Pipe Line Company Collection

UGPL 0060 Tam, Reuben, Blackhead from Whitehead, pen and ink, 14” x 18,” 1975 illus: p 34

UGPL 0061 Tam, Reuben, Blackhead from Whitehead, pen and ink, 14” x 18,” 1975 illus: p 34

UGPL 0062 Tam, Reuben, Blackhead from Whitehead, pen and ink, 14” x 18,” 1975 illus: p 34

Reuben Tam (1916- )

Written in 1976 for the catalog and reproduced as printed, with spelling corrected. Not current.

The powerful presence of natural form in the Hawaiian Islands, where Reuben Tam was born in 1916, has provided the impetus and inspiration for much of his work. Abstracted geological palimpsests, the effects of weather on organic and inorganic substances, rock strata, eroded wood—all these are persuasively evident in the work of this mature painter and watercolorist.

Tam studied at the University of Hawaii, the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), Columbia University, and the New School in New York. He was an instructor at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1946 to 1974, visiting professor at Oregon State University, and Queens College, City University of New York.

Beginning in 1939, when he won First Prize at the Annual of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Tam’s awards and exhibitions have included a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949; first prize at the Brooklyn Museum Biennial in 1958; the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in 1973; and prizes in both 1974 and 1975 awarded by the National Academy of Design.

Exhibitions of his work were held at the Downtown Gallery in New York four times between 1945 and 1952; at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 1940; the Crocker Gallery in Sacramento, 1941; and the Honolulu Academy (1941 and 1967). His work is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney, Guggenheim, Metropolitan, and Brooklyn Museums, New York; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; the Fort Worth Art Center; the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian; and many others.

From The Art Collection of United Gas Pipe Line Company (Houston, 1976), curated by Susan Rush.