Tōshi Yoshida
Toshi Yoshida 吉田遠志 (1911-1995), son of renowned shin hanga artist Hiroshi Yoshida 吉田博 (1876-1950), was a printmaking artist associated with the sosaku hanga movement. Born in 1911 during the last year of the Meiji period, Toshi Yoshida witnessed the high points of social liberalism during the Taisho era, rising militarism and the devastating World War II. In the realm of art, he witnessed the rise and fall of shin hanga, the postwar rise of sosaku hanga (creative prints) and abstract expressionism.
Childhood
One of Toshi’s legs was paralysed during his early childhood. Not being able to attend school, Toshi enjoyed watching animals and his father’s printmaking workshop. Encouraged by his grandmother Rui Yoshida, Toshi often made sophisticated sketches of animals. Toshi’s artistic family sowed the seeds of his artistic vision and talent. See also Yoshida family artists.
Early Artistic Development
Toshi Yoshida’s artistic career was a long struggle between fidelity to his father’s legacy and freedom from it. Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), renowned shin hanga landscape artist, dictated Toshi’s early artistic development. In 1926, Toshi chose animal as his first subject to distinguish himself from his father, who was a landscape printmaker. However, in the 1930s Toshi started making landscape paintings and prints similar to his father’s works. Father and son traveled together and even painted side by side. In 1930 to 1931, Hiroshi and Toshi traveled to India, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Calcutta and Burma.
In 1940 he married Kiso Yoshida (nee Katsura) and they soon had five sons.
Wartime
Toshi’s adult career began under adverse circumstances. Toshi 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, Toshi produced oil paintings that depict factory workers and civilians engaging in war production. After the war, because of economic hardship, Toshi published seventeen landscape works in 1951 for American personnel and their wives.
Postwar Turn to Abstract Expressionism
The death of Hiroshi in 1950 marked Toshi’s total break from his past and naturalism. In 1952, Toshi began a series of abstract woodcuts, influenced by his brother, Hodaka Yoshida (1926-1995). In 1953, Toshi traveled to the United States, Mexico, London and the near East. He made presentations in thirty museums and galleries in eighteen states. From 1954 to 1973, Toshi made three hundred nonobjective prints.
Animal Prints and Africa
In 1971, Toshi 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, Toshi worked almost exclusively on animal prints. Toshi is also a children’s book illustrator. He wrote his own short stories and made illustrations in the Animal Picture Book series.
References and Further Reading
- Allen, Laura W. A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Chicago: Art Media Resources, c2002.
- Skibbe, Eugene M. Yoshida Toshi: Nature, Art and Peace. Minnesota: Seascape Publications, 1996.