<b>MURO</b> / Chizuko Yoshida1953<b>SOLD</b></em>

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.

“Muro” was a design Chizuko produced after her brief study with the Sosaku Hanga artist Koshiro Onchi. Though this work is representational, the design has strong elements of simplification that work in concert with a striking surrealist palette that provides the viewer with a subjective interaction rather than the experience of a familiar likeness. It’s interesting to consider her husband’s print of Muro, also available in this exhibition. The work was executed a year later, most likely inspired by the same trip. Hodaka’s print is much more realistic but anticipates his movement towards abstraction. Chizuko’s Muro is a step or two further along this path.

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.