Reuben Tam
American artist (1916-1991)
Reuben Tam (January 17, 1916 – January 3, 1991) was a Chinese American landscape painter, educator, poet and graphic artist.
Early life and education
He was born in Kapaʻa on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. He earned a BA degree from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1937. He attended classes in 1940 at the California School of Fine Art (later the San Francisco Art Institute). In 1941 he moved to New York City and he continued his studies from 1942 until 1945 at Columbia University with Meyer Schapiro.
Career
Tam became affiliated with the Downtown Gallery in 1945. Tam is best known for his referential abstract landscape paintings showing both land and sea, such as From Cliffs to Evening. In his later career he worked more in pure abstraction.
From 1946 to the 1974, he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (BMAS). Some of his notable students from BMAS included Frances Kornbluth, Mel Tanner, Jean Arcoleo, Pat Adams, and Richard Mayhew.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Reuben Tam” is american artist (1916-1991). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Reuben, American and artist, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7317523. VIAF identifies the subject as 267207062. The Library of Congress control number is n86012796. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1991, 1937 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reuben Tam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.