was a Japanese

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniq ...

artist associated with the ''

sōsaku-hanga was an art movement of woodblock printing which was conceived in early 20th-century Japan. It stressed the artist as the sole creator motivated by a desire for self-expression, and advocated principles of art that is "self-drawn" (自画 ''jiga' ...

'' movement, and son of ''

shin-hanga was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized the traditional '' ukiyo-e'' art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods (17th–19th century). It maintained the traditional ''ukiyo-e' ...

'' artist

Hiroshi Yoshida was a 20th-century Japanese painter and woodblock printmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the shin-hanga style, and is noted especially for his excellent landscape prints. Yoshida travelled widely, and was particularly known ...

Childhood

One of Yoshida's legs was paralysed during his early childhood. Not being able to attend school, he enjoyed watching animals and his father's

workshop. Encouraged by his grandmother Rui Yoshida, Tōshi often sketched animals.

Early artistic development

Yoshida's artistic career was a long struggle between fidelity to his father's legacy and freedom from it. Hiroshi Yoshida, a ''shin-hanga''

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

artist, dictated Tōshi's early artistic development. In 1926, Tōshi chose animals as his primary subjects to distinguish himself from his father, who was a landscape printmaker. However, in the 1930s, Tōshi started making landscape paintings and

prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...

similar to his father's works. Father and son traveled together and even painted side by side. From 1930 to 1931, Hiroshi and Tōshi traveled to India, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma. In 1940 he married

Kiso Yoshida Kiso Yoshida (1919–2005) was the wife of Tōshi Yoshida and one of the artists in the important Yoshida family of Japanese artists. Unlike the others in the family, Kiso created only a few woodblock prints, but she excelled in the older, tradit ...

(née Katsura) and they soon had five sons.

Wartime

Yoshida's adult career began under adverse circumstances. Yoshida was still an apprentice in the Yoshida family system. He had little, if any, artistic autonomy from his father. 1936 was the beginning of military dictatorship, under which art was under censorship. In 1943, Yoshida produced oil paintings that depict factory workers and civilians engaging in war production. After the war, because of economic hardship, Yoshida published seventeen landscape works in 1951 for American personnel and their wives.

Postwar turn to abstract expressionism

The death of his father in 1950 marked Tōshi's total break from his past and from naturalism. In 1952, Yoshida began a series of abstract woodcuts, influenced by his brother, Hodaka Yoshida. In 1953, Tōshi traveled to the United States, Mexico, London, and the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

. He made presentations in thirty museums and galleries in eighteen states. From 1954 to 1973, Yoshida made three hundred nonobjective prints.

Animal prints and Africa

In 1971, Yoshida returned to his innate affinity for animals and focused on birds and animals again. His ''Humming Bird and Fuchsia'' in 1971 was a prelude to the African works that he began the following year. From 1971 to 1994, until the last years of his life, Tōshi worked almost exclusively on animal prints. Tōshi was also a children's book illustrator. He wrote his own short stories and made illustrations in the ''Animal Picture Book'' series.

References

*Allen, Laura W. ''A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists''. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Chicago: Art Media Resources (2002). *''Japanese Print Making: a handbook of Traditional & Modern Techniques''. Preface by Oliver Statler. *Skibbe, Eugene M. ''Yoshida Toshi: Nature, Art and Peace''. Minnesota: Seascape Publications (1996). *Yoshida, Toshi & Rei Yuki. ''Japanese Printmaking, A Handbook of Traditional & Modern Techniques''. Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. (1966).

External links

Toshi YoshidaToshi Yoshida: 12 worksToshi Yoshida Woodblock Prints GalleryYoshida Toshi Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshida, Toshi Japanese printmakers 1911 births 1995 deaths Sosaku hanga artists