Fujio Yoshida

was a Japanese artist. She was the first female artist among the Yoshida family artists.

Early life and education

Fujio Yoshida was the daughter of and , a Western style Japanese artist. Trained from an early age in the Western-style known as ''yō-ga'', she went on to create both naturalistic and abstract watercolors, oils, and woodblock prints. Her paintings of enlarged flower parts are sometimes, and perhaps incorrectly, associated with Georgia O'Keeffe’s work.

Her parents had a family of four girls, but to begin with no son was born to carry on 's work as a Western-style artist. It was expected that a male heir was needed to carry on the family artistic tradition. As a result, adopted his most talented male student, , who then became known as . A few years later a son was born, but was so favoured by his adoptive father that he retained his status as first son. After died, enrolled his adopted sister in some of the best Western-style studios in Tokyo.

Career

and Hiroshi travelled together to the United States in 1903–1905. They held their first joint exhibition in Providence, Rhode Island. Only 16 years old, was an instant American art world phenomenon, admired for her beauty and exotic kimono, but even more so for her graceful watercolor scenes of Japan. Shows in other East Coast cities followed. She sold almost as many pieces as on that trip and on subsequent trips in 1907 and 1923–1925. Each trip included travel around the world on the way back to Tokyo.

Fujio then entered the initial Japan Fine Arts Exhibition, in 1910 she received an award for ''Spirit Grove''. She exhibited with and helped establish the (Vermilion Leaf Society), the art society for women.

From 1911 until the 1920s, Fujio stopped paining due to family tragedy. When she returned to art, she developed a new approach and began to specialise in flower painitings and still lifes in watercolour. She also experimented with oils and engraving.

In 1949 she began to create abstract flower paintings in bright colours in oils, watercolours, and in 1953 in woodblock prints. She put flower heads indigenous to Japan into fish bowls to enlarge them and painted or engraved the magnified results. It is thought that she was iInfluenced by her son 's abstract art.

published her autobiography, (Vermilion Leaf Record), in 1978. In 1980 she held her first solo exhibition in Tokyo.

Personal life

married Hiroshi Yoshida in 1907. Fujio's first-born child, daughter Chisato, was born in 1908 but died in 1911 shortly after the birth of her first son, . Within a year he had contracted polio, leaving him partially paralyzed. Overcome with grief, stopped painting for almost 10 years. Her mother, artist Rui Yoshida lived with the family and took care of much of the domestic duties during this time. A second son, , was born in 1926. Both sons became artists and their maternal grandmother Rui was a formative influence on her grandsons's artistic careers.

After her husband died in 1950, lived first with 's family and then with 's family.

died peacefully in 's home in 1987, months short of her 100th birthday.

Legacy

A large and scholarly exhibit of her work was mounted by the Fuchu Art Museum near Tokyo in 2002, where her treatment of light was seen as clearly differentiating her work from her husband's. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts featured her work in its 2002 exhibition and catalogue, ''A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Family Artists''. In 2003, Fukuoka Art Museum held the first major retrospective of her work, showing 130 of her paintings in an exhibition entitiled ''Fujio Yoshida: A Painter of Radiance''.

''The Yoshida Family: Three Generations of Japanese Print Artist'' was held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. Her works were shown for the first time in the UK at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in ''Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking'' 19 June to 3 November 2024.

Her works are held in a number of institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Cincinnati Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Toledo Museum of Art, Tokyo National Museum, Fukuoka Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

References

Sources

* Fujio Yoshida, ''Shuyō no ki'', Taiyō Publishing Co., Tokyo, 1978
* ''Yoshida Fujio: A Painter of Radiance'', Fuchu Art Museum, 2002

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshida, Fujio
1887 births
1987 deaths
20th-century Japanese painters
20th-century Japanese printmakers