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.

This elegant painting is an original work produced on paper and features three large diamond-shaped forms rendered in translucent gold and white, while finer strokes in gold pigment streak across in opposition at the center and at the top. There is a remarkable three-dimensionality expressed that is difficult to capture in photography. The work demonstrates the hand of the master painter, which possesses both graceful and powerful gestural movements.

Connoisseur's Note

Shinoda's large-scale paintings on paper rarely come up for sale. Original work on unmounted paper is also a rarity, as we are more likely to encounter her paintings as screens or framed and mounted onto wood or even canvas. The condition of this piece is pristine, making this painting an ideal acquisition for the discriminating connoisseur or institution. This work comes with a certificate of registration that recognizes this as an original work in the hand of Shinoda.

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