Hodaka Yoshida

Hodaka Yoshida (吉田 穂高, Yoshida Hodaka, September 3, 1926 – November 2, 1995) was a Japanese modernist artist who worked first in oils, and then from 1950 in the woodblock print medium. From the beginning of his career, he broadened the range of styles and techniques used by Yoshida family artists.

His father and mother, Hiroshi Yoshida and Fujio Yoshida, were both leading Western-style artists in Tokyo in oils, watercolors, and from 1925 in shin-hanga woodblock prints. Hodaka's older brother, Tōshi Yoshida, became the heir to the Yoshida Studio and worked in both oils and woodblock prints. Hodaka was supposed to become a scientist, but as the Second World War ended, he defied his father's plans and became, not only an artist, but one who focused on abstraction, a style his father disdained. (Skibbe, 11-12) Unlike others in the family, Hodaka's art is quite complex, with an "edgy" feel to it. (Robertson, 114)

Instead of having a straight line development, his work moved forward in a series of abrupt stages. For example, his 1955 encounter in Mexico with primitive Pre-Columbian artifacts and architecture radically reoriented his art. A survey of the total range of his work - about 600 prints over 45 years - reveals distinct periods, each having major changes in subject matter, vocabulary, style, and color pallet. His styles, while always his own, drew from Expressionism, Pop, Photorealism, and Color Field abstraction. (Allen, et al., 114-119) Broadly speaking most of his prints would be categorized as sōsaku-hanga.

Main periods:

1950-53 Early Prints - simple modern observations of nature and human nature

1953-54 Buddhist Prints - modern reformulations of traditional Japanese material culture

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