Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking

Explores the rich history of Japanese printmaking passed down through the Yoshida family.

This book, accompanying the 2024 exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, explores the Yoshida family’s important contribution to Japanese woodblock printing, from patriarch Hiroshi down to the current generation, led by Yoshida Ayomi. The story of the Yoshida family has been woven into the history of Japanese printmaking across two centuries, with each generation infusing this traditional art form with their sensitivity and imagination.

Trained as a painter and watercolorist, Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) was a pioneer of the shin hanga artistic movement, which revived the traditional ukiyo-e prints (＂pictures of the floating world＂). His incredible corpus of woodblock prints contributed to the popularity of Japanese prints in the West. Fujio (1887-1987), Hiroshi’s wife, a watercolorist, painter, and printmaker, was the first Japanese woman artist to gain international acclaim.

Toshi (1911-1995) and Hodaka (1926-1995), Hiroshi and Fujio’s sons, represent the second generation of this artistic dynasty; Toshi introduced post-war abstraction to the Japanese printmaking process, while Hodaka pushed these modernist instances further, achieving a unique personal style inspired by the sōsaku hanga movement of artistic self-expression. His wife Chizuko (1924-2017) co-founded the first group of female printmakers in Japan, the Women’s Print Association.

The youngest member of the Yoshida family is Ayomi (b. 1958), daughter of Hodaka and Chizuko, whose practice bridges the gap between ukyio-e and contemporary art thanks also to the exploration of organic materials. She has been exhibited at major international institutions and will contribute an original installation to the Dulwich show.

Monika Hinkel is a specialist in Japanese prints and a lecturer in the arts of Japan and East Asia at SOAS, University of London.