Shinoda Tōkō

Shinoda Toko

篠田桃紅

Shinoda Tōkō

Tokyo

printmaker

calligrapher

Perhaps the most famous woman print artist in Japan, Shinoda works in both printmaking and calligraphy. She utilizes lithography for its proximity to painting, allowing her to brush flowing strokes of ink onto the stone. Her free, fluid style is based in a tradition of loose "grass script" calligraphy and evokes the motion of wind on water.

Shinoda Tōkō, originally trained as a calligrapher and painter, took up lithography in the early 1960s at the suggestion of the American printmaker, Arthur Flory. Lithography is a planographic process; that is, the stone (or, in the case of Shinoda's prints, usually a zinc plate), is a flat surface. The plate is coated with a gum arabic and acid solution to insure that it will hold the image, which is created with a grease-based ink. Once the plate has been chemically treated to accept ink only in the proper places, the artist's original gestures can be replicated with astonishing accuracy. The production of a uniform edition of lithographs requires the utmost precision in each step of printing. Shinoda has entrusted her printing to Kimura Kihachi for most of her career.

Female

Associate of: Kimura Kihachi (Japanese, 1934-2014)