Untitled (from the series 'Primitive Energy Prints')

Hodaka Yoshida

A dynamic woodcut abstraction done in blacks and grays in 1956 by Hodaka Yoshida. The white areas have blind-embossed gauffrage elements. Done in 1956, after Yoshida had traveled to the United States, Cuba, and Mexico which left a deep impression on the artist. Between 1955 and 1963 he did a series of woodcuts he called "Primitive Energy Prints", abstractions of the primitive in Pre-Columbian forms and achieving a feeling of motion.

Hodaka, son of printmakers Hiroshi and Fujio Yoshida and younger brother of printmaker Toshi Yoshida became a printmaker, against his father's wishes. He said: "My father's opposition made me an abstract artist, I've always liked Miro and Klee, but I don't know that either has been a concrete influence...I started to make prints around 1950 and I've carved and printed my own from the beginning."

In an interview with author Ronald Robertson Yoshida discussed his process: "...I start with a vague idea or emotion which I try to visualize from various angles or points of view. Occasionally I succeed on fixing it as a clear image, but the original idea often develops into another object...An action inspires me with an idea which decides or stimulates the next action. Forms and colors thus produced are gradually organized into a picture...Sometimes, I find, quite by chance, in an automatic drawing, a part of a sketch or stains on paper that which I had been looking for, and then I begin to work it out into a definite image."

Yoshida's imprint on the art world stood out from that of his family's in that his work went through several distinct stylistic periods, with influences of non-representational Abstraction and Cubism; to Buddhist and Primitive Japanese folk art; to New York pop art; and finally to the Surrealist, collage-like images of houses, street scenes, and nudes. At each turning point his work displayed his dedication to understanding fully the intricacies of each technique. He worked in etching, engraving, lithography, serigraphy, and photo-transfer techniques. At each evolution, Yoshida's work was embraced by critics worldwide.

Yoshida exhibited at the print biennals of Tokyo, Krakow, Ibiza, Ljubljana, and others. In 1981 he organized the major Japan Print Association exhibition, "25 Years of World Exhibition of Modern Print Art" in Tokyo. He died in November of 1995 and in late 1995, he was posthumously awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun.