Yoshida Chizuko

Yoshida Chizuko

吉田千鶴子

Yokohama 1924

Tokyo

printmaker

painter

Yoshida Chizuko studied oil painting in the 1940s with printmaker Kitaoka Fumio (1918-2007) and took drawing classes at the Hongo Art Institute. She began her artistic career exploring the gestural expressionism of post-war abstraction, exhibiting at the 1949 Yomiuri Independent Exhibition and finding affinity with the Tokyo avant-garde of the day. At first, she worked exclusively as a painter; after meeting and then marrying Yoshida Hodaka in 1953, Chizuko began to explore printmaking as well. In 1956, she co-founded the Women's Print Association. She has traveled widely with her husband and children. Yoshida Chizuko is one of the most innovative Japanese print makers of the second half of the twentieth century. At a time when many of her male contemporaries found a single style and maintained it all their lives as a marketable ‘brand,’ Chizuko continually experimented with new themes and techniques.

Female

Mother of: Yoshida Ayomi (Japanese, born 1958)

Daughter-in-law of: Yoshida Fujio (Japanese, 1887-1987)

Daughter-in-law of: Yoshida Hiroshi (Japanese, 1876–1950)

Spouse: Yoshida Hodaka (Japanese, 1926-1995)

Mother of: Yoshida Hodaka (Japanese, 1926-1995)