Tyree

TyreeDouble Gold Medal Winner: IBPA Book Award for Best Biography and Best Cover, 2018 The World War II US Marine who became an iconic artist of the Tiki aesthetic Raised in Central California, Ralph Burke Tyree was the most prolific portrait artist of the South Pacific peoples of the twentieth century. After studying art at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, Tyree joined the Marines seven weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He

Double Gold Medal Winner: IBPA Book Award for Best Biography and Best Cover, 2018

The World War II US Marine who became an iconic artist of the Tiki aesthetic

Raised in Central California, Ralph Burke Tyree was the most prolific portrait artist of the South Pacific peoples of the twentieth century. After studying art at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, Tyree joined the Marines seven weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He soon shipped off to Samoa.

There, Private Tyree was befriended by his Commanding General and became the Marine base’s artist, painting the officers and their loved ones. Thus began a thirty-year career as a professional artist.

After the war, Tyree returned to the South Pacific to live in places such as Guam, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island of Hawaii and traveling to Palau, Fiji, Tahiti, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands, painting sensual portraits and idyllic beach and jungle scenes on fine French silk and black velvet. During the Tiki revolution of the 1960s, Tyree’s paintings were favored by Tiki bars and restaurants, making him one of the most famous South Pacific and Tiki artists of the twentieth century.

Ralph Burke Tyree was a dreamer, whose idyllic paintings invite you into a balmy paradise. In full color, Tyree: Artist of the South Pacific chronicles his distinguished career, from US Marine to Tiki art icon and endangered species activist.