Chizuko, Pushing Boundaries
- Cara Richardson
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Every year I look forward to the annual release of the College Women’s Association of Japan’s Print Show catalog. CWAJ has been hosting a print show since 1956 and the beautiful accompanying catalog was and still is the best way to learn about contemporary printmaking and print artists in Japan. I still fondly remember perusing the catalog many years ago when I came across Chizuko Yoshida’s beautiful pastel butterflies taking flight as if they were about to lift off the page. What a wonderful surprise it was to see Chizuko’s delicate butterflies dancing once again, this time on the walls of Mia.
Butterflies at Dawn, 19784 • Yoshida Chizuko • Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Gift of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture: Formerly given to the Center by H. Ed Robison, in memory of his beloved wife Ulrike Pietzner Robison • 2013.29.543
Chizuko Yoshida, born Chizuko Inoue in 1924, trained as a child to be a musician and dancer. It was not until high school that she took her first visual arts classes and after graduation went on to study oil painting. In the late 1940s, Chizuko met her future husband, Hodaka Yoshida. It was at this time she joined a group of avant-garde artists, writers and thinkers who discussed current art criticism and theory. In her paintings, Chizuko moved away from traditional realism and toward abstraction. By the early 1950s, Chizuko was showing her abstract paintings with Hodaka’s woodblock prints. Hodaka, and the Yoshida family she married into in 1953, introduced Chizuko to woodblock printmaking which she embraced fully, leaving oil painting behind.
The 1950s was a transformative era for printmaking globally. In New York City, Stanley William Hayter, through his studio Atelier 17, encouraged artists to rethink printmaking entirely. He promoted printmaking not for its reproductive capabilities but for its creative processes. In Japan, artists of the sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement also embraced experimentation. Artists like Chizuko Yoshida explored new ideas from international art movements including abstraction, abstract expressionism, surrealism, and op art, blending them with traditional Japanese themes and sensibilities.
Jazz, 1954 • Yoshida Chizuko • Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Gift of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture: Formerly given to the Center by H. Ed Robison, in memory of his beloved wife Ulrike Pietzner Robison • 2013.29.539
In 1954 Chizuko joined the Japan Print Association and the College Women’s Association of Japan. In 1956, Chizuko co-founded with another young female print artist, Iwami Reika (1927-2020), Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, Women’s Print Association. From 1956 - 1965, the Women’s Print Association offered like-minded innovative female print artists a space to collaborate and discuss ideas in an art world still heavily dominated by men.
In her woodblock prints from the 1950s, as seen in the four currently on view, Chizuko blends western abstraction with traditional Japanese aesthetic and refinement. Her works Rain and Autumn evoke the deep connection Japanese culture has with nature. Through abstract layers of colors and shapes, Chizuko expresses the feelings of these natural phenomena. In Rain, we can imagine the pelting of raindrops against a windowpane as we the viewer look out at a wet blue-grey world. Autumn’s red sun and fall colors provide warmth while black rhythmic lines and a stark tree-shape hint at the breezes blowing in Autumn and the bare world to come in winter. In Jazz and Mambo, we see Chizuko explore in greater depth this sense of rhythm, motion, and pulse, a sign of her continued love of music and dance.
Rain, October 1954 • Yoshida Chizuko • Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Gift of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture: Formerly given to the Center by H. Ed Robison, in memory of his beloved wife Ulrike Pietzner Robison • 2013.29.540
Motion is a continuing theme in Chizuko’s later work. The undulating white lines in the op art print Star, Star, Star A, from 1969, vibrate around three bold bicolor stars. In the 1970s and 80s the images Chizuko is most known for, her butterfly prints, became her main focus. They combined her love of nature with her ability to create three dimensional movement. Butterflies swarm upon the paper, their density balanced by the ombre colored space around them. Later in life, Chizuko was able to break free of the demand placed on her by the overwhelming popularity of her butterflies. In Searing Blast, from 1993, as the grasses sway in the radiating heat, we can imagine the beating warmth of the unseen sun making us long to step back to those cool pelting drops of rain from the 1950s.
Chizuko Yoshida’s continuous avant-garde approach to traditional Japanese print aesthetics made her one of the most important and influential female Japanese print artists in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Her work to support and foster other female print artists led to many more women becoming print artists. Today, the Japanese printmaking scene is vibrant and diverse thanks to artists like Chizuko who never stopped exploring while staying true to her skill and her traditions.
“The Abstract Worlds of Yoshida Hodaka and Chizuko” is on view until October 4, 2026 in galleries 251, 252, and 253.
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