Satonobu Spirig

A study of the abstract paintings of Japanese-Swiss painter Teruko Yokoi.

The work of Japanese-Swiss painter Teruko Yokoi (1924-2020) is characterized by unflagging creative energy and constant evolution. In Teruko Yokoi, art historian Kuniko Satonobu Spirig, who is also of Japanese origin, analyzes and explains cultural and biographical relations in Yokoi’s art, as well as the influences of abstract expressionism on her painting technique.

Raised in the city of Tsushima on the Japanese island of the same name, Yokoi moved to Tokyo in 1949, where she attended the private Joshibi University of Art and Design. In 1954, she moved to the United States, where she completed her education at the San Francisco Art Institute and with painters Hans Hofmann and Julian E. Levi in New York. There she met artists such as Sam Francis, whom she married in 1959, Mark Rothko, and Kenzo Okada. In this environment, she drew new energy and began to develop her own style of abstraction and invent her own idiom. In 1962, she moved to Switzerland, where she lived and worked tirelessly in the city of Bern until her death.

Teruko Yokoi takes an in-depth look at her painting methods and her vocabulary of abstraction, which was formulated over the course of a long artistic career.

Kuniko Satonobu Spirig is a Japanese-born art historian, journalist, and filmmaker based in Geneva. She produced Teruko Yokoi--Art in the Making, a film documentary on the life and art of Japanese-Swiss painter Teruko Yokoi.