Matsumi Kanemitsu, 69, Artist Who Worked in Four Mediums
Published: May 16, 1992  Matsumi Kanemitsu, a painter closely
associated with the New York Abstract Expressionist school, died
on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69 years old.  He
died of lung cancer, said Nancy Uyemura, a friend.  Mr.
Kanemitsu was proficient in four separate mediums: sumi, or
Japanese ink drawing; watercolor; lithography, and painting on
canvas. His painting was done with acrylics, using a complex
technique that involved brushing, staining, pouring and glazing
to achieve abstract imagery that often reflected landscapes and
the forces of nature.  He also worked all of his life with
Japanese sumi ink and brushes, maintaining that the dramatic
effects of color painting could also be achieved in black and
white and the gradations between them. In 1961 he earned a Ford
Foundation grant to work at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in
Los Angeles and readily translated the techniques he had learned
in sumi painting into lithograph