Big Brother T. Yoshida

         My last post was about the artist Fujio Yoshida, who was married to the artist Hiroshi Yoshida.  Today’s post will be about their elder son, Tōshi Yoshida (Japan, 1911-1995).  Tōshi’s artistic beginnings seem to have been influenced primarily by his grandmother, who encouraged him to draw animals, but eventually he was apprenticed in his father’s workshop.  This meant his job was to carry on the family’s artistic style, as defined by his father, rather than to follow his own preferences.  That he may not have been entirely happy with this is evidenced by the fact that as soon as Hiroshi died in 1950, Tōshi went off into a radically different style, highly stylized and even abstract.  However, eventually he worked the rebellion out of his system and returned to detailed realism, but with a focus on animals as subjects.  So after my cursory look at his biography and work, I see three phases in Tōshi’s woodblock prints.  Here are a couple of examples of each.

        First, the early work in which Tōshi followed in his father’s shin-hanga footsteps.  These two pieces are beautiful examples of the style that combines traditional Japanese woodblock techniques and sensibilities with western-art-trained perspective and light effects.  They are serene, meticulous, and controlled, which reflects the controlled environment in which they were made: not only a dutiful son, but living under a dictatorship that censored art.

        Second, the wild and crazy middle work beginning in the 1950s, in which Tōshi turned to  total abstraction, then also strange, stylized magical landscapes.  Many of his abstract works could be considered op art, before it had become a movement or the term was coined.  In this example the layers of finely carved lines create dazzling and disorienting interference patterns, while the central figures (which evoke early Chinese characters to my western eyes) provide a focus.  I like the landscapes even more, and this one evokes a huge mysterious monument towering over a desert outcropping.  This one begs for stories, while suggesting all the unknowns of lost civilizations and alien worlds.

        Third, the return to representationalism and the celebration of the animals Tōshi saw and loved on his extensive travels.  He particularly liked African animals, and many of his prints do include scenic backgrounds, but I chose this one for its drama.  You can see the meticulous realism combined with the use of those traditional Japanese printmaking techniques in the carving of the fur and the shading of the background.  And finally I include a very different example from Tōshi’s later prints because A) I think it’s just really cool, and B) I notice the way the sky echoes those op art lines from his abstract period while the silhouetted deer ground this scene in his return to realism.

        Tōshi Yoshida’s life looks to me like a trajectory of an artist struggling at times to find his own voice, while making absolutely stunning work at every step along the way.  Tune in next time to see some pieces by his little brother, whose artistic development followed a very different path.

[Pictures: Half Moon Bridge, woodblock print by Tōshi Yoshida, 1941 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Iidabashi, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1939 (Image from The British Museum);

Misty Dance, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1957 (Image from The British Museum);

Illusion, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1966 (Image from The British Museum);

Black Panther, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1987 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Mendocino, Sunrise, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1985 (Image from The British Museum).]