Details

Born in Manchuria (occupied China), Toko Shinoda returned to the homeland with her fellow native Japanese after the war. Shinoda recounted how she never felt welcomed or at home in Japan.

This alienation afforded her freedom from the strict Japanese social structure and allowed her to pursue a career in the visual arts, an unconventional vocation for a woman of her generation. Shinoda's early influence was calligraphy expressed as sumi work on paper. However, internationally-minded artistic movements, such as abstract expressionism, inspired Shinoda to move beyond the calligraphic idiom and fully engage with abstraction. In this new format, Shinoda found early success with a 1953 exhibition of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She subsequently moved to New York three years later, residing there until 1958.

During her stay, she came into contact with the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and other key figures of the abstract expressionist movement. This left a deep impression on her – she later praised these artists as "very generous people" with whom she "would share ideas and opinions on our work." During this time, her work was represented by Betty Parsons Gallery and placed in a number of high-profile collectors. Upon her return to Japan, Shinoda honed he work beyond traditional calligraphy towards an expressive, abstract style. By the 1960s, she began working in lithography with hand-applied embellishments. It was her printed work that became a force in the field and finally provided traction for her acceptance in Japanese artistic circles.

Rivage is a work that demonstrates Shinoda's unique synthesis of calligraphy with abstract expressionism. Each element within this composition emanates from the spirit of the calligraphic brush, but the design’s expressive interaction owes much to the power of the various modes of abstraction from the late 1950s. 

In this design, Shinoda places a series of large rectangles—black, gray, and silver—at left that move toward the center of the composition. Three confident strokes slash through the center of the composition in a vertical gesture—the artist has pointed out that these strokes are her representation of the moon. At right is a curious-looking stroke of the brush that appears with a downward movement that opens up to the bottom right. All the elements in this work appear vibrant, possessing the animated quality of a master’s hand.

Connoisseur's Note

Though printed via stone lithography, there is a significant portion of the composition that boasts hand-executed embellishments by the artist herself. In particular, the gestural strokes in black and gold at the center of the design are hand applied. This work is a prime example of why her lithography is so sought-after in the worldwide marketplace.

This impression is in a fine state of preservation with exceedingly sharp and vivid colors and in overall excellent condition.