Mori Yoshitoshi

森 義利

Mori Yoshitoshi

printmaker

Born and bred in Tokyo, Mori grew up among the shopkeepers and blue collar workers who gave the city its brash, defiant character. Harsh economic realities made it necessary for him to work from a young age, but an interest in art led him to study painting and textile design. He discovered the Folk Art movement through a lecture given by its founder, Yanagi Sôetsu (1889-1961). Mori helped to form a group dedicated to traditional dyeing practices, where he met Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984), a pioneer in the revival of stencil printing in textiles and prints. He joined Serizawa in Okinawa to study traditional stencil dyeing methods, but later went his own way to develop stenciling as a medium for prints.

The twentieth-century printmaker Mori Yoshitoshi is known for his unique stencil print process, known as kappazuri, combined with an aesthetic that is equal parts Japanese folk idiom and powerful, expressive design. Mori was first a textile artist, practicing traditional stencil-dyeing techniques and a proponent of the mingei folk-craft movement. He broke with the mingei movement in the postwar period, after leaders like Yanagi Sōetsu disparagingly spoke of his turn to making works on paper; from the 1960s forward he focused almost exclusively on printmaking. Nevertheless, his subjects remained tied to Japanese folk culture: local customs, crafts, and festivals; kabuki theater; and classical monuments of Japanese literature like the Tale of Genji and Tale of the Heike. [CCM Agenda, Jeannie Kenmotsu, 2019-04-10]

Male