<b>FREEZE </b> / Chizuko Yoshida1955<b><SOLD</b></em>
ARTIST: Chizuko Yoshida (1924-2017)
TITLE: FREEZE
MEDIUM: Woodblock print
DATE: 1955
DIMENSIONS: 11 x 15 7/8 inches
CONDITION: Excellent, no problems to note
LITERATURE: Statler, Oliver, Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn, Tuttle, Tokyo, 1956, pl. 98
PROVENANCE: Yoshida Family Collection
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SOLD
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Details
Before marrying Hodaka Yoshida in 1953, Chizuko was a serious artist who studied under Koshiro Onchi and Fumio Kitaoka and had a close association with Okamoto Taro, a leading avant-garde artist and critic. By the mid-1950s, Chizuko was working almost exclusively in abstraction in both oil painting and woodblock prints. After her marriage to Hodaka, the Yoshidas traveled around the world producing and exhibiting their artwork. Chizuko’s own work is a synthesis of a refined Japanese aesthetic underlying a variety of modern and contemporary international styles.
“Freeze” was a design Chizuko produced after her brief study with the Sosaku Hanga artist Koshiro Onchi. This work, a design comprised of pure abstraction, brings to mind a window in winter overtaken by frost and ice. The print is executed in a variety of blues and purples with a fluid and lyrical quality, effectively conveying the active process of freezing and capturing the patterns one might find on a window on an exceptionally cold day.
Connoisseur's Note
Chizuko Yoshida’s woodblock prints from this period are quite scarce, as she did not produce work in large quantities. Making this print even more desirable, this impression was never framed or displayed for extended periods of time ensuring the colors are in a pristine state of preservation, appearing as vivid today as they were the day the work was produced.
