Tōshi Yoshida (1911-1995) Japanese, Woodblock Print. 1954. Titled 'Autumn in Hakone Museum'. Signed in pencil. 

Overall Size: 22 1/4 x 16 3/8 in. 

Sight Size: 15 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. 

#2791 . 

Tōshi Yoshida was born on July 25th, 1911 in Tokyo, the son of one of the most famous artists of the shin-hanga movement, Hiroshi Yoshida. One of Yoshida’s legs was paralyzed in an accident during his early childhood. Unable to attend school, he spent much of his time watching animals and in his father’s printmaking workshop. Encouraged by his grandmother Rui Yoshida, Tōshi often sketched animals in his youth, but his entire artistic career was a long struggle between fidelity to his father’s legacy and a desire for freedom from it. His father traveled extensively, including to the United States, and instructed his son on landscape art, intending for him to continue the style. In 1926 Tōshi officially chose animals as his primary subjects, but in the 1930s his father forced him to make landscape paintings and prints when they traveled together and painted side-by-side. From 1930 to 1931 Hiroshi and Tōshi traveled to India, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma, trying to build Tōshi’s reputation. 1936 was the official beginning of Japan’s military dictatorship, which placed strict censorship laws on art. In 1940 he married Kiso Yoshida (née Katsura), with whom he had five sons. In 1943 Yoshida produced oil paintings that depict factory workers and civilians engaging in war production. Like many artists in Japan during the 1940s, much of his pre-War art was destroyed in bombings or considered lost. The death of his father in 1950 marked Tōshi’s total break from his past and from naturalism. He published seventeen landscape works in 1951 for American personnel and their wives, desperate to make ends meet. In 1952 he 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. He made presentations in thirty museums and galleries in eighteen states, and became associated with the sōsaku-hanga movement, which emphasized total control by the artist in the entire process of drawing, carving, and printing an image, rather than collaborating with others on each step. Between 1954 to 1973 Yoshida made three hundred abstract prints. In 1971, Tōshi rediscovered his affinity for animals and focused primarily on birds for the rest of his life, creating illustrations for children’s books and incorporating African themes into his art. He died on July 1st, 1995 after a long battle with cancer, and is considered one of the most innovative Japanese artists of the 20th Century.