A month before graduating in 1942 from the University of California, Berkeley, the Japanese American artist Mikoyo Ito (1918–1983) and her husband were sent to the Tanforan interment camp. Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. Ito was allowed to leave the camp the following year; she finished her degree, went on to study at Smith College, and then received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the city in which she settled. “Chicago gave me a sense of surrealism,” she said, “although it is not that obvious.” Ito worked seven days a week, from sunrise to sunset. Her abstract paintings, evoking landscapes and human bodies, required intense practical precision and a slow working process. But there was no other choice. “Painting is very much a part of my life, like breathing. It is a necessity. It is do or die.” —Clara Molot