Kunié Sugiura sits alone at a wooden table in her studio, writing or drawing with focused attention. The room is filled with books, stacked papers, and artworks leaning against the walls. Sunlight filters through sheer curtains, casting a soft glow across the worn wooden floors and eclectic furniture, including a striped armchair and an air conditioner in the window.

Photo courtesy of Kunié Sugiura Studio / The New York Times Credit...Sara Messinger for The New York Times

Pioneering “Photopainter” Alum Kunié Sugiura Featured in The New York Times

By Sophia Salganicoff

As featured in the New York Times, Kunié Sugiura (BFA 1967) has spent her career bending and hybridizing photography, merging it with painting, X-ray film, and personal memory. Sugiura left Tokyo at age 20 to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). While leaning towards Industrial Design during her studies at SAIC, Sugiura became inspired after seeing Andy Warhol’s large-scale Coca-Cola canvas and began her decades-long celebrated career in the medium of photography. Focused on the personal rather than the cultural, she pioneered “photopaintings” and reimagined X-rays taken during a hospital stay into vibrant Surrealist works. 

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