Yoshida Tōshi • 夏 • 1963 • 抽象 • 手签名 • 日本木版画 - 日本 - 20世纪

Toshi Yoshida (吉田遠志)
Natsu (夏) – 夏季

Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) — Sōsaku Hanga
Date: 1963
Publisher: Yoshida Studio (self-published), 23/100 (Limited edition)
Format: 27.5 × 41.0 cm (10.8 × 16.1 inches)
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Impression & Colours: Excellent. The colors are vivid and beautifully preserved throughout. The deep crimson red ground retains its full intensity, with the layered woodgrain-like texture in the background showing fine printing detail. The gold and ochre tones of the central pyramidal structure are rich and luminous, and the grey-blue wedge form displays subtle bokashi gradation. The golden-orange sweep at the lower edge transitions smoothly into warm yellow tones. A strong, well-registered impression with no fading or discoloration.

Paper: Excellent. The washi paper is firm and intact with no tears, holes, or losses. Full margins are present with original deckle edges visible. There is some minor edge toning along the margins consistent with age, and very slight handling marks. The sheet is clean and well-preserved overall. Please examine all photographs carefully.
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Summer – Heat Made Visible

Two abstract structures rise from a golden earth into a blazing crimson sky. The dominant form — a towering, stepped pyramid covered in dense bands of geometric pattern — evokes ancient architecture consumed by heat haze, its edges dissolving into the red atmosphere that surrounds it. Beside it, a cooler grey-blue wedge provides a moment of contrast, as though a shadow or a slit of sky has been cut into the furnace. The entire composition radiates: the wavy, woodgrain-like texture of the red background suggests heat shimmering off sun-baked stone, while the golden-orange arc at the base reads like parched earth curving toward the horizon.

What makes this print so striking is its evocation of temperature through pure abstraction. This is not a landscape with a thermometer — it is the sensation of summer itself, translated into colour and form. The geometric patterning on the pyramidal structure carries echoes of Pre-Columbian ornament, Mesopotamian ziggurats, or the decorative motifs of Southeast Asian temples — places Yoshida knew from his extensive travels. Yet the composition remains thoroughly modernist: flat planes of colour, bold contrasts, the tension between geometric order and organic texture. The layered woodblock printing achieves extraordinary depth and subtlety, with multiple colour passes creating a surface richness that no reproduction can fully convey.
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Toshi Yoshida: The Abstract Years — A Secret Chapter

Toshi Yoshida (1911–1995) was born into Japanese printmaking royalty as the eldest son of Hiroshi Yoshida, one of the most internationally celebrated shin hanga artists of the twentieth century. Raised in the family workshop, Toshi learned every stage of the woodblock process from childhood and accompanied his father on sketching trips to India and Southeast Asia from the age of nineteen. He developed a distinctive style characterized by bold colour and large, simplified forms — particularly in his celebrated animal and landscape prints — and went on to receive the Order of the Rising Sun, one of Japan's highest civilian honours, for his contributions to Japanese art. His works are held by the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the British Museum (London), the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo).

Yet there is a lesser-known chapter in Toshi's career that collectors increasingly prize. For roughly twenty years after Hiroshi's death in 1950, Toshi created approximately 300 abstract woodblock prints — a body of work he had suppressed during his father's lifetime out of respect, since Hiroshi Yoshida openly disliked non-figurative art. These abstract designs, produced from approximately 1952 to the early 1970s, represent Toshi's most personal artistic statement: a deliberate break from the family tradition, an engagement with international postwar modernism, and an exploration of what the traditional mokuhanga medium could achieve when freed from representation. By the late 1960s, Toshi gradually returned to the figurative style that defined his later career. "Summer," dated 1963, falls squarely in the heart of this abstract period — a mature, confident work from an artist fully in command of both his medium and his vision."