Vertical Abstract Prints

This stunning large-scale hand-painted canvas edition is created in oil by Shizico Yi and is 95% hand painted directly onto canvas. Signed on the front and fully signed and numbered ...

The Offs (first pressing), 1984 Vinyl Record and Offset Lithograph Album Cover 12 1/4 × 12 3/25 inches Unframed CD Presents, Ltd. – CD 025 Provenance Plastic Fantastic Records, Bryn ...

Rectangular Portal is a cyanotype monotype that plays with depth, geometry, and light. Composed of layered indigo gradients, the work creates a rhythmic sense of movement, drawing t...

This exquisite heliogravure after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Mme Monique Mercier (Mrs. Monique Mercier), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse...

This exquisite lithograph by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), titled Sans titre (Untitled), originates from the 1964 album Recettes pour un ami, illustrations de Jean Cocteau (Recipes for a...

Screenprint in colours, on Arches paper, with full margins. Edition 42 of 100 64.1 x 55.2 cm (25.2 x 21.7 in) 71.1 x 62.2 cm, 28 x 24.5 in Signed, numbered, titled and dated on the f...

Alexander Calder Balloons and spirals, 1965 Lithograph in colors Unsigned as usual On light vellum 32 x 23 cm (c. 12,5 x 9 in) Published in 1965 by National Museum of Modern Art, Pa...

Joan Miró - Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró VIII Date of creation: 1975 Medium: Lithograph on Gvarro paper Edition: 1500 Size: 49,5 x 35,5 cm Condition: In...

Historically scarce -- hand signed museum invitations by Lichtenstein from MoMA, where the artist attended himself, rarely surface, especially when framed and preserved at this level...

Medium: original lithograph. Printed in 1938 and published in Paris by Teriade for the art revue Verve (volume 1, number 2). Kandinsky was invited to contribute an original compositi...

Joan Miró - Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró XX Date of creation: 1975 Medium: Lithograph on Gvarro paper Edition: 1500 Size: 49,5 x 35,5 cm Condition: In v...

Helen Frankenthaler (after) A Paintings Retrospective: vintage LACMA Museum poster, 1990 Offset lithograph museum poster (Unsigned & U...

This is the original opening invitation card for Donald Judd: The Last Editions at Brooke Alexander Editions in 1994. The invitation takes the form of a postcard that opens up to rev...

Robert Indiana Original postmarked LOVE First Day Cover, with handwritten letter on the back (hand signed twice), 1973 Handwriten latter on the verso of postmarked First Day Cover (H...

Golden Glow Summer Night is a large, hand-painted Artist’s Proof, uniquely finished with original oil paints and hand-applied gold leaf on premium Giclée fine art paper. This is a tr...

Art Card: Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park 30 (Hand Signed by Richard Diebenkorn) from the Estate of UACC President Cordelia Platt Offset lithograph card Hand signed and dated 8.12.88...

Renowned contemporary conceptual African American artist Glenn Ligon Black Rage (back cover), 2019 Silkscreen and digital print Edition number 53/100 Accompanied by an official Certi...

This Artist’s Proof is approximately 90% hand-painted with original oil paint and gesso by Shizico Yi, applied directly onto a premium Giclée canvas made from her original oil painti...

This exquisite lithograph and pochoir after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled Mother and Child, from the folio Picasso, Fifteen Drawings, 1946, originates from the 1946 edition published by Pantheon Books, Inc., New York, and rendered and printed by Albert Carman, City Island, New York, 1946. Mother and Child conveys Picassos timeless exploration of tenderness, intimacy, and the human bond, distilling the universal theme of maternal love through graceful line and lyrical composition. With rhythmic simplicity and emotional clarity, the work captures the purity of affection and the quiet strength of motherhood—an enduring motif throughout Picassos artistic life. Executed as a lithograph and pochoir on velin paper, this work measures 18.75 x 12.63 inches. Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued. The edition exemplifies the exemplary standards and artistic integrity of the fine art publishing and printmaking of Pantheon Books, Inc., and Albert Carman whose next collaborative project following this edition was with Marc Chagall in the creation of his monumental suite, Four Tales from the Arabian Nights in 1948. Artwork Details: Artist: After Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Title: Mother and Child, from the folio Picasso, Fifteen Drawings, 1946 Medium: Lithograph and pochoir on velin paper Dimensions: 18.75 x 12.63 inches (47.6 x 32.1 cm) Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered as issued Date: 1946 Edition: D, primary edition; L, out of commerce, hand signed by Pablo Picasso Publisher: Pantheon Books, Inc., New York Printer: Albert Carman, City Island, New York Catalogue raisonne reference: Orozco, Miguel. Picasso Interpretation Prints II - Etchings, Pochoirs & Woodcuts. Catalogue Raisonne. 2023, illustration 388–402 Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium Provenance: From the folio Picasso, Fifteen Drawings, 1946, published by Pantheon Books, Inc., New York; printed by Albert Carman, City Island, New York, 1946 About the Publication: Picasso, Fifteen Drawings (1946) was one of the earliest fine art portfolios issued in the United States to feature the work of Pablo Picasso in the mediums of lithography and pochoir. Published by Pantheon Books, Inc., New York—a press renowned for its pioneering role in introducing European modernism to American audiences—the portfolio marked an important cultural bridge between postwar Paris and the emerging art scene in New York. The suite comprised fifteen images selected from Picassos prolific oeuvre, including depictions of mythological figures, musicians, and introspective portraits. Each work was rendered using a combination of lithography and pochoir, printed by Albert Carman at his atelier in City Island, New York, whose craftsmanship ensured a remarkable fidelity to the tonal and chromatic nuances of Picassos originals. The portfolio was produced in an edition of D, primary edition; L, out of commerce, hand signed by Pablo Picasso, issued unbound within a printed paper folder, and distributed primarily through Pantheons art book division under the direction of Kurt Wolff and Monroe Wheeler—key figures in shaping the intellectual reception of modern art in the United States. Picasso, Fifteen Drawings helped establish the artists postwar reputation among American collectors, scholars, and institutions, introducing a generation of viewers to the expressive immediacy and psychological depth of his draftsmanship. The publication also exemplified Pantheons broader mission to make modern European art accessible to an American audience, alongside their landmark editions devoted to Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Marc Chagall. Technically refined and historically significant, the portfolio stands as a testament to the transatlantic exchange of modernist aesthetics during the mid-20th century and remains one of the most sought-after Picasso print editions issued in the United States before 1950. About the Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, and ceramicist whose extraordinary vision revolutionized modern art and defined the visual language of the 20th century. A child prodigy from Malaga, Spain, Picassos career spanned more than seven decades and encompassed an astonishing range of styles and innovations—from the melancholic Blue and romantic Rose periods to his pioneering invention of Cubism with Georges Braque, which shattered conventional notions of perspective and form. Influenced by the bold expressiveness of El Greco, the structure of Cezanne, and the vitality of African and Iberian sculpture, Picasso became a central figure of the Paris avant-garde, working in creative dialogue with contemporaries such as Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. His insatiable experimentation extended across painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, and sculpture, forever expanding the boundaries of artistic expression. A master of reinvention, Picasso profoundly shaped generations of artists who followed—from Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Jeff Koons and Banksy—cementing his status as a timeless cultural icon whose works remain among the most sought after worldwide. His landmark painting Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) achieved a record-breaking sale of 179,365,000 USD at Christie's, New York, on May 11, 2015, affirming Picassos enduring legacy as one of the most influential and valuable artists in history. Pablo Picasso Mother and Child...

Jacqueline De Butler, French (1928 - ) - Oed de Chat, Year: circa 1968, Medium: Etching with Aquatint on Arches, signed and numbered in pencil, ...

Keith Haring Rare Hiroshima Peace Celebration poster (hand signed by Keith Haring), from the Patrick Eddington Collection, 1988 Framed Original offset lithograph (Hand signed by Keit...

George Chemeche, Iraqi/American (1934 - ) - Composed Field III, Year: 1979, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 250, AP, Image Size: 32.5 x 29.5 inches, S...

Blue & Gray By Mark Rothko 2015 Medium: Offset Lithograph Paper Size: 39.5 x 27.5 inches ( 100 x 70 cm ) Image Size: 27.5 x 25 inches ( 70 x 64 cm ) Edition Size: 800

Sunset Song – The Night stands as one of the most iconic works featured in Modern Ancient – Summer Exhibition at GSY Studio Gallery, UK, 2025.—this Limited Edition ( only 5 available...

Helen Frankenthaler Air Frame, from the New York Ten portfolio (Harrison 6), 1965 Color silkscreen on Arches double-weight watercolor paper Signed and annotated AP in graphite on the...

This exquisite lithograph by Alexander Calder (1898–1976), titled Sans titre (Untitled), from the album Prints from the Mourlot Press, exhibition sponsored by the French Embassy, cir...

Schmidt's 1923 poster for the Bauhaus Exhibition is celebrated for its innovative use of geometric forms and typographic elements, reflecting the school's avant-garde approach to des...

Artist: Gene Davis (American, 1920-1985) Title: "Yankee Doodle" *Signed and numbered by Davis in pencil lower right Year: 1972 Medium: Original Screenprint on wove paper, laid down t...

This is an exclusive handprinted unique cyanotype that takes its inspiration from the mid-century modern shapes. It's made by layering paper cutouts and different exposures using uv-...

Yayoi Kusama With All My Flowering Heart (Triptych), 2014 Set of Three (3) Separate Limited Edition numbered skate decks on 7-ply Canadian maple wood 31 × 8 × 2/5 inches (each) Hand ...

Basquiat Galerie Hans Mayer Düsseldorf 1988: A rare, exceptional 1980s exhibition poster designed & illustrated by Basquiat during his lifetime; published in 1988 on the occasio...

Artist: Pablo Picasso Title: Le Ballet Medium: Lithograph Date: 1954 Edition: 10,000 Framed Size: 20 1/4" x 16 3/4" Sheet Size: 12 1/2" x 8 3/4" Signature: Signed in the stone Refere...

This exquisite lithograph by Alexander Calder (1898–1976), titled Anneaux sur noir (Rings on Black), originates from the historic 1973 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 201. Published by...

Joan Miró Litografia Original VI Color Lithograph Year: 1975 Size: 13.25 × 10 inches (33.65 x 25.4 cm) Catalogue Raisonné: Queneau, Miro Lithographe II, 1952-1963, p.35 Publisher: Ma...

Original screen print on archival paper by Theodorus Stamos. Untitled. Signed in pencil lower left. Edition. 73/75 in pencil lower right. Executed in 1965. Condition is excellent. ...

This exquisite lithograph by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), titled Scene XXXV, Bacchus (Scene XXXV, Bacchus), originates from the 1957 album Jean Cocteau de l'Academie francaise, Theatre,...

This stunning Artist's Proof is an one-off, hand-painted with highlights by the artist , signed at front and on the back label too; this proof is 80% hand painted with original oil a...

Yellow, Blue, Orange (1955) By Mark Rothko 1988 Medium: Offset Lithograph Paper Size: 39 x 27.5 inches ( 99 x 70 cm ) Image Size: 27.5 x 18 inches ( 70 x 46 cm ) Edition Size: ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Portrait de l’Artiste (Portrait of the Artist), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matis...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Madame M.P. (Mrs. M.P.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates from th...

Kandinsky at Galerie Karl Flinker - 1977 Exhibition Poster - in Ink on Paper Poster with a reproduction of "Merry Structure" by Vassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944). This posted i...

Andy Warhol Deluxe Signed Edition of Film Festival Lincoln Center (Feldman & Schellmann, II.19), 1967 Silkscreen, die-cut on opaque acrylic Edition 2/200 (Signed and numbered on the back with engraving pen) Hand-signed by artist, As this work was done on acrylic, Warhol signed and numbered it by hand on verso with an engraving needle. Printed date with copyright Frame included: Elegantly framed in a museum quality wood frame with UV plexiglass. A die-cut window has been created in the back of the frame to reveal Warhol's incised signature and edition Publisher: Leo Castelli, New York Printer: Chiron Press, New York Catalogue Raisonne: Feldman & Schellmann, II.19 This work is often hung and displayed both vertically and horizontally - see photos for inspiration This work is one of only 200 done on opaque acrylic rather than wove paper, signed and numbered on the opaque acrylic by Andy Warhol with an engraving pen. (Separately, there was an unsigned edition of 500 on wove paper). What distinguishes this rare, extremely desirable signed edition of 200, other than that it is signed and numbered by hand by Andy Warhol, is that the black graphic text FIFTH NEW YORK is placed directly over the text Film Festival of Lincoln Center; whereas in the edition of 500, the text black text FIFTH NEW YORK is placed on top of the white text. An innovative feature that appears in this special edition is a perforated line running across the surface of the print, at its triangular cut out sides, mimicking the tear line present in real commercial movie admissions tickets. Chiron Press commissioned by Lincoln Center, devised a special process expressly to imprint the edition with this perforation using a die cut stamp. This work is quintessential early Warhol, with characteristic bright neon colors, featuring text, along with the artist's very recognizable flower motif. The Lincoln Center ticket...

Over the past 20 years, Michelle Oppenheimer has become well known for composing paintings that capture the imaginative and organic possibilities of abstract watercolor and acrylic. ...

Françoise Gilot Window on Another Dimension, 1981 Lithograph on Arches mould made Johannot paper Signed and numbered in graphite pencil; also bears artist's monogram with date, edition of 60 Unframed 27.25 inches by 19.75 inches Francoise Gilot was not just Picasso's muse; she was an accomplished artist in her own right, and at age 100, the New York Times dubbed her the art world's latest "It Girl".! Signed and numbered in graphite pencil; also bears artist's personal monograph with date. Held in original vintage frame under plexiglass. Charmingly, there is a sticker label on the back of the frame, from the "Picasso Gallery Custom Framing" in D.C. This silkscreen is based upon Gilot's eponymous painting, also done in 1981 Excerpt from Alan Riding's 2023 New York Times obituary on Gilot: " Françoise Gilot, an accomplished painter whose art was eclipsed by her long and stormy romantic relationship with a much older Pablo Picasso, and who alone among his many mistresses walked out on him, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 101...But unlike his two wives and other mistresses, Ms. Gilot rebuilt her life after she ended the relationship, in 1953, almost a decade after it had begun despite an age difference of 40 years. She continued painting and exhibiting her work and wrote books. In 1970, she married Jonas Salk, the American medical researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine, and lived part of the time in California. Still, it was for her romance with Picasso that the public knew her best, particularly after her memoir, “Life with Picasso,” written with Carlton Lake, was published in 1964. It became an international best seller, and so infuriated Picasso that he broke off all contact with Ms. Gilot and their two children, Claude and Paloma Picasso. Ms. Gilot’s frank and often-sympathetic account of their relationship — she dedicated the book “to Pablo” — provided much of the material for the 1996 Merchant-Ivory movie, “Surviving Picasso,” in which she was played by Natascha McElhone, with Anthony Hopkins as Picasso. If Ms. Gilot’s book sold well, so has her art. With her work in more than a dozen museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, her paintings fetched increasingly higher prices well into her later years. As recently as June 2021, her painting “Paloma à la Guitare” (1965), a blue-toned portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million in an online auction by Sotheby’s. That surpassed her previous record price, $695,000, paid for “Étude bleue,” a 1953 portrait of a seated woman, at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014.. And in November 2021, her abstract 1977 canvas “Living Forest” sold for $1.3 million as part of a retrospective of her work at Christie’s in Hong Kong. Lisa Stevenson, the head of curated sales for Sotheby’s in London, told ARTnews after the 2021 auction, “It isn’t commonly known that Gilot’s commitment to art was present long before her relationship with Pablo Picasso, and she was sadly often left in his shadow.”.. Marie Françoise Gilot was born into a prosperous family on Nov. 26, 1921, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, the only child of Emile Gilot, an agronomist and chemical manufacturer, and Madeleine Renoult-Gilot. Her 19th-century ancestors had owned a couturier house of fashion whose clientele included Eugenia, the wife of Emperor Napoleon III. Marie Françoise was drawn to art from an early age, tutored by her mother, who had studied art history, ceramics and watercolor painting. Her father, however — recalled by Ms. Gilot as an authoritarian who had forced her to write with her right hand, though she was left-handed — had other ideas. Envisioning a career in science or the law for his daughter, he persuaded her to enroll at the University of Paris, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1938 at age 17. She went on to study at the Sorbonne and the British Institute in Paris and receive a degree in English literature from Cambridge University. As war crept closer to France in 1939, her father sent her to the city of Rennes, northwest of Paris, to enroll in law school. All the while she continued working on her paintings. Then came the German occupation of Paris, in June 1940, and she joined other students in an anti-German protest march at the Arc de Triomphe. In a clash with the French and German authorities, Ms. Gilot was arrested, briefly detained and put under watch. “From day one, we were not the kind of people who would become collaborators,” she said of her family. She continued her law studies at the University of Paris, but after taking her second-year examinations, in June 1941, she lost interest and abandoned the field, deciding to devote herself to art. She began private lessons with a fugitive Hungarian Jewish painter, Endre Rozsda...

"Tapiz of Tarragona" 1970 Lithography. virtual frame 76x56 Cm. 200 Copies Edition Exemplary HC Papel Guarro with Water Filigree of the Sala Gaspar Signed in Monogramada and numbered ...

This exquisite heliogravure after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Mademoiselle M.A. (Miss M.A.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates...

Julio LE PARC (1928-) Diffraction (Transformation), 1988 Original lithograph, airbrush and stencil Signed in ink Numbered / 100 copies On black wove paper, 56 x 38 cm (c. 22 x 15 in...

BASKET DRAWING, by Dale Chihuly(American b.1941) renowned glass sculpture artist depicts one of his signature abstract basket forms. This unique, limited edition lithograph was print...

Andy Warhol Deluxe Collectors' Edition of Exposures (Hand Signed and Numbered), 1979 Hardcover Monograph in leather with gilt edge and stamped in gilt. Hand signed by Andy Warhol on...

This exquisite lithograph and pochoir by Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), titled Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), from the album XXe siecle, Nouvelle serie, XXIe Annee, No. 12, Mai-Jui...

This exquisite lithograph after Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), titled Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), from the album San Lazzaro et ses Amis, Hommage au fondateur de la revue XXe si...

This exquisite lithograph by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), titled Forme Jaune (Yellow Shape), originates from the historic 1958 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 110. Published by Maeght ...

This exquisite lithograph after Henri Matisse (1869–1954), titled Mademoiselle L.L. (Miss L.L.), from the album Portraits par Henri Matisse (Portraits by Henri Matisse), originates f...

Artist: Jim Dine Title: Woodcut Heart. 1993 Image Size: 15 1/8 x 13 1/8 inches Paper size: 23 × 17½ inches Carrier: Mohawk Superfine Cover Medium: Woodcut Proiect Began:January 26, 1...

Lithograph on vélin Mohawk Superfine Smooth paper. Paper Size: 11.937 x 8.96 inches. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, In Memory of M...

This is a large Artist's Proof with original oil and gesso paint highlighting; it is the No 1 of the only 3 Proofs; the colours of the painting and Shizico's expressive brushstrokes ...

Joan MIRO Red Composition, Preface to 52 Affiches, 1963 Original lithograph in colors (Atelier Mourlot, Paris) Signed in pencil by Fernand Mourlot Dated in pencil Numbered on / 125 ...

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...

Signed lower right, "Maxon" for John Maxon (American, 20th century) and created circa 1995. Additionally titled, verso, 'White Flower'. Monotype with additional hand-painted detail. ...

This exquisite lithograph by Joan Miro (1893–1983), titled La Melodie acide (The Acid Melody), from the folio 14 original lithographs by Joan Miro "La Melodie acide" (The Acid Melody...