<b>ONE MORE SCENE: STONEHOUSES, TOMO</b> / Hodaka Yoshida1983<B>SOLD</B></em>

Details

Hodaka Yoshida was the youngest son of Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida. Like his older brother Toshi, Hodaka displayed an early interest in art and woodblock prints but was encouraged to pursue science and higher education. After the war, Toshi became heir to the Yoshida Studio, and Hodaka defied his father’s wishes—abandoning science for art, particularly abstraction, a style his father disdained. In 1953, he married Chizuko, a fellow woodblock print artist, and traveled the world together, producing and exhibiting artwork influenced by their travels and the international artistic trends of the day. Hodaka’s body of work is diverse, encompassing Shin Hanga—like designs at the onset of his career, which later progressed to encompass fully abstract designs displaying Buddhist and primitive folkloric qualities. Hodaka also experimented with a pop surrealist style that incorporated elements of photography, advertising, and eroticism.

“One More Scene: Stonehouses, Tomo” is a work that favors a pop surrealist bent. The design illustrates two modest contemporary Japanese homes. Their well-worn structures are situated in a desolate space resembling a desert—a vibrant blue sky whose tone in color appears unnatural hovers overhead. The composition is stark. The worn surface of the structures becomes a visual ornament, much like stones in a zen garden, in this austere pop, psychedelic, surrealist landscape.

Connoisseur's Note

Since 1973, Hodaka began adapting his photographs into prints, skillfully combining photoetching with color woodblock printing techniques. Eugene Skibbe indicated that Hodaka was already renowned as a photographer well before he gained recognition as a print artist. His photographic prowess was evident in 1958 when one of his images adorned the cover of Camera Mainichi magazine, and in 1960 when his work was featured in the Modern Photographs Exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.