Chizuko Yoshida

1924-2017

Spring A

titled and signed in pencil on the bottom margin, Spring A, Chizuko Yoshida, with red artist's seal within the composition, Chizuko, 1954

oban tate-e 16 by 10 7/8 in., 40.6 by 27.5 cm

In the late 1940s Chizuko began associating with a group of avant-garde writers and artists, known as the Century Society (Seiki no kai) who met regularly to exchange ideas regarding international developments in modern art theories. This exposure influenced Chizuko to move away from realism and towards abstract expressionism. In 1949 she met Hodaka Yoshida (1826-1995) at an exhibition organized by the Taiheiyo group (where he won an award for an abstract painting), and in 1950 Chizuko was likewise awarded a prize for an abstract painting at the annual exhibition of the Shuyokai group. Chizuko and Hodaka began to show their work in joint exhibitions at Tokyo's Maruzen Gallery, and they were married in 1953, a year that marked a notable burst in creative print production emanating from the entire Yoshida family.

United in their pursuit of modernism, Chizuko and Hodaka were able to attend a few of the First Thursday Society (Ichimokukai) gatherings held by the leading sosaku hanga printmaker, Onchi Koshiro (1891-1955). Onchi believed that printmaking could be a primary means of creative expression, however, he was not interested in consistently replicating the same image but felt that the process itself was the primary act of creation. The fact that prints by their very nature are an art of multiples was secondary, merely a by-product of creativity. This print demonstrates Chizuko's exploration of the ethos of Onchi's creative process. Against a background of angled buildings in a cityscape, Chizuko shifted the placement of the abstract layers of string and chain of linked orbs arching over the composition on variant impressions.

Provenance:
Yoshida Family Collection

References:
Oliver Statler, Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn, 1959, pp. 170-171
Laura W. Allen, ed., A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002, pp. 178-181

(inv. no. C-3705)

price: Sold