1990s Art

In his painting, Robert Hammerstiel is in constant search of the balance and harmony of form. In his drastic reduction to the physical essentials and the colourful placarding, he cre...

"In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends." - Okakura Kakuzo Calla Lilies - flower study, originally taken on medium format Fujichrome transp...

Aquatint in colours, 1991, on wove paper, signed in pencil, numbered from the edition of 27, 61.6 x 44.5 cm.

8 x 10 inch (image size) gelatin silver contact print, on an 11 x 14 inch sheet Edition 10. Signed and stamped on verso. Framing additional. Larger sizes available - please inqui...

"From the Umbrage of a Master Poet (Book of LOVE)" silkscreen print from a portfolio of 12 original poems and 12 original prints by artist Robert Indiana. Edition 58/200. The prints ...

New York City's early example of a skyscraper from 1902 is depicted in an artistically abstract way. It is photographed with autumn foliage in the foreground and with the iconic tri...

Listing is for UNFRAMED print. Inquire within for framing. If the exhibition piece is sold or the customer orders a different print size, the photograph is produced upon purchase...

"Quiet, The Dove (Book of LOVE)" silkscreen print from a portfolio of 12 original poems and 12 original prints by artist Robert Indiana. Edition 58/200. The prints in the portfolio w...

Barbara Nessim is an artist/ illustrator who has contributed to Harper's  Bazaar, Esquire, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time, Ms among others. She ...

Sam Francis Untitled 1995 Etching in colours, Edition of 35 53.3 x 45.7 cms (21 x 18 ins) SF17887

This Blue Dog work consists of 3 different outlined portraits of dogs. One frame is 1 dog on a white background, another is 2 dogs on a dark blue background with a moon and the 3rd i...

Original Deborah Turbeville photograph. Signed by the artist.

A precise and exact rendering and meticulous spacial arrangement are on full display in Lewandowski's this later work. The work looks better in person. The artwork is in pristine co...

17-color silkscreen Edition of 75

Lorna Simpson Recall, 1998 Silkscreen on felt 30 x 22 inches Edition of 50 Hand signed and numbered by the artist

EDIK EDWARD ARCADIEVICH STEINBERG b. 1937 born in Moscow 1937 (Russian) Title: Composition in Shades of White, 1997 Technique: Original Hand Signed and Dated Gouache Painting on cardboard size: 76.5 x 57.5 cm / 30.1 x 22.6 in Additional information: This original painting is hand signed and dated by the artist. It was painted in 1997. Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner. Exhibited: Paris & Tel Aviv, Galerie Le Minotaure...

Artist: (after) Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928-2011) Title: "Helen Frankenthaler: Reflections (Catalog of 12 Prints)" Series: (after) Reflections *Issued unsigned Year: 1995 Med...

the painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

This Blue Dog work consists of a single dog with soulful yellow eyes sitting on the right side of a pink, white and red background covered in the dog's soulful yellow eyes scattered ...

This abstract monotype is by Sarah Smelser (1971-). It measures 6 x 6 inches the plate and 16.5 x 12.75 inches framed. It is titled in the lower left, “Layers of Each Other” and sign...

Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. This hand signed silk textile scarf work is acquired directly from the publisher. Extremely uncommon to find this piece in new condition and comes in the original red silk box. This art piece can be framed and hung on the wall or be a worn as a wearable art piece. This dazzling, large, hand signed, silkscreen on 100% Italian silk shawl was created by Frank Stella in collaboration with his longtime publisher Kenneth Tyler of the famed Tyler Graphics Studio. "The Whale Watch...

Offset lithograph on paper Open edition Unsigned and unnumbered Excellent. Some imperfections may exist as per the nature of the material, including very minor creasing on very edges.

This will be shipped direct from the artist to you or your framer. In this photograph a silhouetted horse follows a silhouetted figure closely as they trek through a field. The use of abstracted figures helps emphasize the emotional aspect of Kelly's main theme: the bond between humans and animals. Pete Kelly finds his inspiration in nature and the landscape. Specifically focusing on, "The reclamation by nature of urban settings", Kelly finds a particularly strong aesthetic and power in the beauty of the urban landscape. "I try to see beauty around me, drawing beauty from ugliness by capturing close up textures of fading paint or graffiti, or by reducing the shape of the subject to silhouette." Kelly's fascination with photography, the quality, and flexibility of the medium began at a very early age. Born in England in 1966, and as the son of a military man, Kelly spent most of his childhood growing up in West Germany. After leaving school Kelly enrolled in a photography course with the R. A. F Photographic Unit, based in Wildenrath in Germany. Although this initial training lasted only six months, it established a life long passion and dedication to photography. Already an avid traveller, Kelly initially decided to return to the UK,
to study Graphic Design at Stockport College, before moving to America in 1987. After completing an Internship at an innovative commercial photography studio in America,
Kelly began working as a Photographers Assistant. Working closely with a range of photographers allowed him to intrinsically develop his own
refined sense of aesthetic as well as develop and master photographic theory and technique. Now working as a Fine Art Photographer in his own right,
 Pete Kelly utilizes the most cutting edge equipment and techniques,
 painting with photography by compositing and layering photographs...

Resting Nude, limited edition color litho. 450/475, pencil signed 11"x14" framed 19.5x23.5x1 Itzchak Tarkay was born in 1935 in Subotica, on the Yugoslav-Hungarian border. In 1944, ...

Listing is for a FRAMED edition print. Edition 7 of 25 After 30 years on West 11th Street, The Robin Rice Gallery celebrates its first ever exhibition for Robin Rice. For decades, Robin has exhibited a wide variety of photographers at the gallery but never her own work. As the show’s title denotes, “It’s About Time.” The opening reception will be held on Wednesday, January 23rd from 6pm to 8pm. The exhibit runs through March 17, 2019. While her photography spans five decades and multiple continents, Rice maintains a cohesive, candid voice that carries throughout all of her work. Observing the world around her in a cinematic way, she possesses an uncanny ability to recognize and capture moments of beauty and the spontaneity of the human spirit. By evoking a wonderstruck sensibility, Rice expresses a deep-rooted love for both people and landscapes using her distinct bohemian style. In this salon-style retrospective, Rice uses an “old school” approach and shoots with her Nikon on Tri-X film. When creating her art, she insists, “the camera has a mind of its own.” The scenes captured in her photography are unedited and thus born purely from the magic of the in-camera composition. In the invitational image, “Tree Farm...

Listing is for UNFRAMED print. Inquire within for framing. Edition 1 of 15. If the exhibition piece is sold or the customer orders a different print size, the photograph is p...

Listing is for UNFRAMED print. Inquire within for framing. Edition 1 of 10. If the exhibition piece is sold or the customer orders a different print size, the photograph is produced upon purchase. Please allow two weeks for production. Shipping time depends on method of shipping. Price is subject to availability. The Robin Rice Gallery reserves the right to adjust this price depending on the current edition of the photograph. In her new exhibition Churilla draws from her years spent as a swimmer, lifeguard, and athlete to capture the forgotten freedom and exuberance of days of youth spent on the water. Viva la Vida is a mix of timeless portraits and candid photographs "I’ve always been drawn to the water- now my art, my sense of athleticism, freedom and oasis have merged in a way", says Churilla. Her nod to iconic photographers from the past, such as Edward Weston, and Herbert List, is apparent in her portrait work. In another Christian & Nathan Fletcher is in the midst of a surf crusade off the coast of Islamorada, Florida. Christian pioneered a new revolution in surfing style with his aerial techniques. The artist’s genuine connection to her subjects allows the viewer to forget the presence of a camera and to be drawn into the personal narrative. The invitational image Longboard Afternoon, taken at Ditch Plains, Montauk, focuses on the portrayal of the atmosphere rather than the individual subjects. With a 70’s feel the viewer is intrigued by the layers of life, activity and parallel moments shared by silhouettes of surfers carrying longboards at hazy days end. One such image, Gustavo, depicts a male figure seated poolside with head bowed. The pose and the wet sheen to his hair and skin give the subject a classic, sculptural look. All the photographs exhibited in are in various sizes are printed on heavy weight cotton paper with the traditional glossy baryta surface in rich tones of black and white. Her artist mother, Barbara Churilla, involved her in creating art, sculpture, painting and photography from an early age. She was raised in Princeton, New Jersey. She graduated from School of Visual Arts in NYC with a BFA in Photography. Lynda began her photo assisting career with legendary photographer Bruce Weber. Over a period of almost a decade she traveled the world with Weber learning not only knowledge of photography, but also life. Eventually becoming his trusted first assistant before embarking on her own photography adventure. Churilla’s work has been celebrated in American Photo, where she was heralded as one of the young visionaries of 21st century. She has photographed numerous celebrities, such as Cameron Diaz, Jewel, Olivier Martinez, Coldplay, Pet Shop Boys...

Paper Size: 36.5 x 25 inches ( 92.71 x 63.5 cm ) Image Size: 29 x 25 inches ( 73.66 x 63.5 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Det...

Impasto oil painting of a Carmel Valley Sycamore Grove. Presented in a wood frame. Signed lower left "H. Vanderhoof." Image, 20"H x 24"L.

A travers.Portfolio with 14 silkscreens. Publisher GKM. Unframed. Edition of 200 ex. Signed, dated and numbered. Free shipment worldwide. “I paint because painting is a private Utopia,” Erró writes of his art. The landscapes in Erró’s work are a constantly changing kaleidoscope of images, multivalent and mysterious, not infrequently controversial, bursting with life – and titillating, too! There is room in his pictures for both paradise and visions of fear. Erró is the alias of Gudmundur Gudmundsson, born on 19 July 1932 in Olafsvik, in north-western Iceland. Since Gudmundur first became enthralled by pictures of works of art in a catalogue from the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the tender age of ten, painting has been his passion and his mission in life. He was accepted into art school in Reykjavik as a 19-year old, subsequently complementing what he had learned there with further studies in Oslo. Erró travelled extensively in Spain, Italy, France and Germany in the 1950s, studying at the Florence Academy of Art in 1954 and at the School of Byzantine Mosaic Art in Ravenna in 1955. It was around this time that he began to exhibit his works, first and foremost in Paris, where he chose to make his home in 1958. During the 1960s he established contact with the Swedish museum director Pontus Hultén, who encouraged him and took him under his wing. Over the years Erró has taken part in hundreds of exhibitions and today his works are on show in museums all over the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Erró’s pictorial world is peopled by comic-strip characters and autocratic despots alike. Donald Duck with his Daisy, Chip & Dale, and other Walt Disney creations are unselfconsciously juxtaposed with Greek gods and madonnas. Elsewhere the German dictator Adolf Hitler stands shoulder to shoulder with his Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein...

Aquatint in colours, 1991, on Fabriano paper, signed in pencil, numbered from the edition of 66, printed by Valter & Eleonora Rossi at Vigna Antoniniana Stamperia d'Arte, Rome, publi...

Modern abstract outdoor totem sculpture by Houston artist Joe Mancuso. The piece is constructed out of various decorative brick, stone, and concrete piec...

Zao Wou-ki - Moments - Original Aquatint Edition of 130 Dimensions: 34.2 x 30.5 cm Vellum paper BFK Rives 1996 Bibliography: Jørgen Ågerup, Zao Wou-Ki: The Graphic Work, A Catalogue ...

Untitled. SF-353 from “Papierski Portfolio” 1992. Signed by the artist. Artwork size : 56 x 76 cm Frame size : 75x97x4 cm Museum glass anti-reflective. Signed AP (artist proof) Sam Francis Archive Number: SF-353 Publisher: The Litho Shop, Santa Monica. Free shipment worldwide. Sam Francis’s paintings are a journey into a dream, a voyage into the landscapes of the soul where colours are lights on fire. Alongside names such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, Sam Francis is an artist who has succeeded in demonstrating a total mastery of abstract expressionism’s impassioned and spontaneous genre. The explosions of colour – red, blue, green and yellow – the streaks, strokes and bold lines of his pictures are the physical synthesis of the deepest crevices of the soul. His colours create rhythmical motifs that, characteristically enough, can be called the “musicality” of his paintings. The work of Sam Francis provides a visible meeting place for the conscious and the unconscious. His pictures are the cross-fertilisation of what has already been experienced with what exists still only as desire, a struggle between melancholy and merrymaking. Influenced by C.G. Jung, the father of psychoanalysis, Sam Francis spent a large portion of his life exploring the premise that dreams, instincts and intuition provide, the keys which unlock the mysteries and meaning of our inner lives. He was also fascinated by the four ancient elements – earth, water, air and fire – which developed into a leitmotif in his work. Sam Francis was born in San Mateo in California, USA in 1923. After starting to paint at the age of around twenty, he soon found himself increasingly consumed by the power of art. He spent much of the 1950s in Paris, from where he not only made frequent excursions to a number of European cities, but also embarked on many journeys to South America and Asia. He continued to move from place to place, primarily in the USA and Japan, right up until his death in 1994. Sam Francis’s first...

Desert Hell, Kuwait, 1991 - Black and White Photography Sebastião Salgado Stamped with photographer's copyright blind stamp Signed, inscribed with title and date on reverse Silver ge...

Listing is for UNFRAMED print. Inquire within for framing. Edition 1 of 25. If the exhibition piece is sold or the customer orders a different print size, the photograph is p...

A tall, modified columnar vase with incised catfish by Canadian-American ceramist Sasha Makovkin (1928-2003). Made of a white clay body. Glaze in varied shades of gray, blue and green. Signed and titled by the artist including trademark on the bottom: "Makovkin," "Blue Catfish." Dimensions: 14.25 Height x 4.75" Top x 5.13" Base. Northern California potter Sasha Makovkin, originally from Vancouver, B.C. and of Russian descent, moved to California in 1954 to work at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito in order to get industrial experience. During the 1050s, Makovkin exhibited at the Association of San Francisco Potters and at the San Francisco Art Festivals. Five years later after arriving in California, Makovkin took some samples of his ceramics to Gumps, a high-end department store in San Francisco. Impressed with his work, Gumps featured Makovkin’s work in the mail floor exhibits for the next three years. He had periods of apprentice with Marguerite Wildenhein at Pond Farm artists’ colony and with Ross Curtis. He also worked for Edith Heath at Heath Pottery...

Very nice and colorful serigraph print on Plexiglas by the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam. Edition of 144, signed and numbered. works is framed with whi...

This listing is for the unframed photograph. Each year, Robin Rice celebrates a Salon style exhibition to showcase her gallery artists and invite new ones. With Robin’s extensive ...

Desert Hell, Kuwait, 1991 - Black and White Photography Sebastião Salgado Stamped with photographer's copyright blind stamp Signed, inscribed on reverse Silver gelatin print 20 x 24 ...

STEPPIN OUT is a hand drawn original lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Arches printmaking paper 100% acid free. STEPPIN OUT is a highly detailed drawing printed in light sepia brown ink depicting a procession of muscular stone men walking...

Beautiful watercolor of two-masted schooner sailing off Mohegan Island, Maine by Edmond C. Johnson (American, 1927 - 2011), circa 1990. Signed lower right corner and on verso. Presented in gilt-toned wood frame with double mat under glass. Image size: 17"H x 21"W. Edmond C. Johnson was a member of the Copley Society...

C-Print, signed, titled and edition ‘3/15’ (recto), and certificate of authenticity (verso), 37cm x 56cm (image size), (59cm x 75cm framed). (Provenance: in the collection of the art...

Church Gate Station, Bombay, India, 1995 Sebastião Salgado International Shipping Available Stamped with photographer’s copyright blind stamp Si...

Balmoral by His Majesty King Charles III (formerly known as HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales) - Hand Signed Limited Edition Lithograph. Belgravia Gallery has been honoured to be associated with the artworks of HRH The Prince of Wales for over 25 years. Anna Hunter, gallery owner, wrote a handwritten letter to the Prince asking him if he would consider making signed lithographs from his beautiful watercolours which could be sold in aid of his charities. The gallery subsequently worked with the Prince for over 10 years publishing some 18 different editions and raising over £4million for the Prince’s Charitable Foundation. Lithographs were made from the Prince’s original watercolours under the guidance of Stanley Jones – a celebrated printmaker who had previously worked with Henry Moore for 30 years, and with Elizabeth Frink, David Hockney and others. Each one is hand-signed. “…One thing I have discovered in the course of my painting efforts is that Balmoral Castle...

Le 14 juillet au bord de la Seine by Lélia Pissarro (b. 1963) Pastel on paper 34.6 x 24.4 cm (13 ⁵/₈ x 9 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed lower left, Lélia Pissarro Provenance Private collection,...

From Interior Series. Woodcut and screen print in colors on Museum Board. Hand signed, dated and numbered by Roy Lichtenstein. Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles.. Corlett 247...

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of American abstract painters that radically defined abstraction and...

Still life , blue, yellow , orange ,Russian art,Lemon, Published in a monographic catalogue Maya kopitzeva’s works have been acquired by the Russian Ministry of Culture, by the Foun...

Vibrant contemporary still-life with bold primary colors of a red apple and blue mug on a yellow table cloth with a bottle of wine by E. Star (American, 20th century). Presented in a...

Nude Figure Study, Standing Female Figure with Sage Green Figure study of a nude model in studio by Los Gatos, California artist M.Z. Murphy (American, 20th century), c.1990. The f...

Sunflowers, Countryside, River, Yellow, Sky, Clouds, Ukraine Georgij MOROZ (Dneprodzerzinsk, Ukraine, 1937 - St. Petersburg, 2015) MUSEUMS Moscow, Tret’jakov Gallery Moscow, USSR Ar...

Paper Size: 19.5 x 25.5 inches ( 49.53 x 64.77 cm ) Image Size: 19.5 x 25.5 inches ( 49.53 x 64.77 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional ...

Color lithograph, Edition 40. Red Grooms is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, and showman par excellence. His major installations, “Ruckus Manhattan”, “The City of Chicago...

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

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