Late 20th Century Abstract Prints

Future Garden is a screen print realized by Leo Guida in 1976. Hand signed and dated. Edition of 50. Excellent condition. Leo Guida  (1992 - 2017). Sensitive to current issues, a...

Monoprint with screenprint, collage, acrylic, stitching and embossing in colors on handmade paper, 1994, signed, dated, titled, and numbered 10/40 (each unique) in black and silver i...

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

Artist Name: Larry Zox Title:Niagara Series IV Yellow Signed Linocut Lithograph Year : 1979 Medium Type: Print - Linocut Lithograph Size-Width Size-Height : 42.25'' 29.75'' Signed ...

Sam Francis Untitled Abstract Expressionist lithograph (Hand Signed from the Carnegie Museum Deluxe Edition), 1972 Catalogue Raisonné: 155, Lembark Hand signed and numbered 25/30 on...

"Original Lithograph VIII" is an original color lithograph by Joan Miro, published in "Miro Lithographs II, Maeght Publisher" in 1975. It depicts M...

David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Joe Tilson, Howard Hodgkin, Peter Blake + 99 artists Visual Aid for Band Aid - designed, and HAND SIGNED and annotated by 104 renowned artists, with official signed COA, 1985 Large olor silkscreen on velin Arches 300 gsm paper with publishers' blind stamp and COA Signed and annotated in various inks and pencil by all 104 artists listed in the official publishers' COA affixed to the back of the frame; numbered 215/500 Publisher Coriander Studio, United Kingdom Frame included: Floated and framed in a wood frame under UV acrylic glazing Measurements: Framed: 59.5 inches (vertical) by 39 inches (horizontal) by .75 inches (depth) Artwork: 48 inches (vertical) by 36 inches (horizontal) Some of the 104 renowned visual artists who signed and annotated this print in pencil are: Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Allen Jones, Eduardo Paolozzi, Elisabeth Frink, R.B. Kitaj, Richard Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Joe Tilson, Patrick Heron, Paula Rego, Terry Frost, Patrick Caulfield, Craigie Aitchison. Gillian Ayres, Maggi Hambling, Michael Craig-Martin, Frank Bowling, Humphrey Ocean...

This is an original drypoint realized by Joan Miró in 1975. Hand signed in pencil on the lower right and numbered on the lower left. Edition of 75 prints. It represents an abstract s...

Artist/Designer; Manufacturer: Sol Lewitt (American, 1928-2007) Marking(s); notes: signed; ed. 23/39; 1989 Materials: etching and aquatint on Arches 88 Dimensions (H, W, D): 21.25"h,...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled Profil et tete de femme (Profile and Head of a Woman), originates from the rare 1970 folio Suite des reproductions d...

Venetian Views: Venice, Morning, 1995 Howard Hodgkin Lift-ground etching and aquatint with carborundum printed in colours with hand-colouring in cadmium red, phthalo green-blue shad...

General Idea was founded in 1967 in Toronto by AA Bronson (b. 1946), Felix Partz (1945-1994), and Jorge Zontal (1944-1994). Over the course of 25 years, they made a significant contr...

Jack Tworkov Art 1982 Chicago Navy Pier Poster, 1981 Limited Edition of 1500 Four color limited edition offset lithograph poster on 300 gram Dove 500 white a...

Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper Size: 12.4 x 9.65 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, XXe siècle, Nouvelle série, XXXVIe Année, N°42 Juin...

Peter Halley Core, 1991 Limited Edition Silkscreen with lithography on Coventry Rag paper. Pencil signed and numbered 13/50 on the front Publisher: Edition Schellmann & Pace Editions...

Etching and aquatint on Japan paper, realized in 1972. Printed and published by Georges Visat, Paris. Edition of 100, numbered 99/100 and hand signed in pencil.

"Echecs (Chess)" is a Limited Edition Lithograph (107/150) by Marcel Mouly. The print is pencil-signed by the artist. It measures approximately 29.5 x 21 inches. The date of creation...

Artist: LeRoy Neiman Title: Home Hole at Shinnecock Medium: Serigraph Year: 1995 Edition: 398/450 Frame Size: 26 1/4" x 35 1/4" Sheet Size: 24 3/4" x 33 3/4" Image Size: 15 3/4" x 25...

Artist: Karel Appel (1921-2006) Title: Moving the Wind Year: 1974 Medium: Silkscreen on Somerset paper Edition: 88/110, plus proofs Size: 27 x 39.25 inches Condition: Good Inscriptio...

Artist: Richard Anuszkiewicz, American (1930 - ) Title: Sun Keyed Year: 1972 Medium: Screenprint (unsigned) Edition: 3000 Image Size: 12 x 14 inches Size: 14 x 18 in. (35.56 x 45....

The Moth is a wonderful colored lithograph on paper, realized in 1973 by the Italian artist Giuseppe Zigaina, and published by La Nuova Foglio, the publishing house of Macerata. Ha...

This exquisite lithograph after Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), titled Fragment de corps de femme (Fragment of a Woman’s Body), originates from the rare 1970 folio Suite des reproductions...

Artist: Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Title: Sky Bird, Braniff International Airways Flying Colors Collection Year: 1975 Medium: Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper Size: 20 x 26 inche...

Donald Judd Untitled #82, 1974 from a portfolio of six works Etching on German etching paper with deckled edges Hand signed and numbered 7/35 by the artist on the front Catalogue Rai...

Artist: Gene Davis, American (1920 - 1985) Title: Royal Curtain Year: 1980 Medium: Screenprint in Colors on Arches, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 250 Paper Size: 29.75 x 21...

DeLoss McGraw Leaving Home (97-301), 1997 Five color lithograph on tan Rives BFK paper with deckled edges Signed and numbered 3/75 in graphite pencil on the front 17 × 24 3/25 inches...

Robert Petersen Eight of Hearts, 1989 Mixed media silkscreen with hand applied acrylic on paper with deckled edges Hand signed, numbered 6/21, dated, and inscribed on the front Uniqu...

Lithograph, 1976 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 12/100 Publisher : Bram Van Velde & Jacques Putman (Paris) Printer : Pierre Badey (Paris) Catalog : Mason-Putman 223 ...

NEW DECO by the woman artist Robin Morris, is an original handmade limited edition lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Arches paper, 100% acid free. NEW ...

Woman is a vintage Lithograph realized by Claude Garache in the 1975. Maeght Editor, France on the rear. Good condition.

Robert Natkin (American, 1930-2010) Untitled, 1978 From the Intimate Lighting series Color lithograph on wove paper Signed, dated and numbered in pencil lower left Edition 47/75 Prin...

Soleil rouge (Red Sun) Etching and embossing, c. 1974 Signed and editioned in pencil by the artist (see photos) Condition: Paper has yellowed. There is a white square at top of shee...

Artist: Donald Saff, American (1937 - ) Title: Untitled - O Year: 1980 Medium: Etching, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: AP Image Size: 24 x 18.5 inches Size: 30 in. x 2...

A superb impression of this color screenprint on white wove paper. Signed and numbered XC/CCC in pencil by Soulages. Published by the Olympic Games Committee, Lausanne. From the "Off...

Artist: Agnes Martin Title: On a Clear Day #15 Year: 1973 Screenprint Japanese Rag paper Image size: 6 7/8 x 8 inches (17.5 x 20.3 cm) Paper size: 12 x 12 inches (30.5 x 30.5 cm) Fra...

Basquiat: Vrej Baghoomian gallery New York, 1989: Vintage original folding announcement card to Jean-Michel Basquiat at Vrej Baghoomian Gallery New York: 10/21 to 11/25, 1989. Pictured on front side is an image of Basquiat's iconic, 'Red Warrior.' A rare, highly collectible Basquiat ephemera piece that works well in any collection. Off-set printed gallery announcement. 8.75 x 5.75 inches (folded closed). Light signs of handling; otherwise very good overall vintage condition. Published by Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, 1989. Unsigned from an edition of unknown. Scarce. Jean-Michel Basquiat rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene. His spray-painted crowns and scribbled words referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. The gestural marks and expressive nature of his work not only aligned him with the street art of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, but also the Neo-Expressionists Julian Schnabel and David Salle. “If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence,” he said of his process. After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works. At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. Related Categories: Basquiat Tony Shafrazi. Basquiat ephemera. Basquiat poster. Basquiat prints...

Screen Print on Lenox Museum Board Stamped by Estate, Sticker, Label, Unsigned, Authenticated by AWAAB, with COA

Screen print on arches paper. From Double Metamorphosis Series. Hand signed and numbered by Yaacov Agam. From the edition of 180. Sheet size 36.25 x 49.75 inches. Image size 29 ...

This exquisite lithograph by Alexander Calder (1898–1976), titled Les folles de Sache (The Madwomen of Sache), originates from the historic 1975 folio Derriere le Miroir, No. 212. Pu...

Artist: Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Title: Convection, Braniff International Airways Flying Colors Collection Year: 1975 Medium: Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper Size: 20 x 26 inc...

Eugenio Carmi is an Italian painter born in 1920 in Genoa. He studied in Turin in Felice Casorati’s studio. His experience as a graphic designer in the ‘50s, is decisive for his pict...

Keith Haring New York City 1989: RARE original 1989 Keith Haring designed Sound Factory Halloween invite featuring a dazzling array of Keith Haring Skeletons: “Keith Haring & Sound...

Eduardo Paolozzi, British (1924 - 2005) - Notes on Organisation of Paradise, Portfolio: General Dynamic F.U.N. Portfolio, Year: 1970, Medium: Photolithograph, stamp signed verso, Edi...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Conquest of Cosmos Frozen Watches of Space Time MEDIUM: Etching SIGNED: Hand Signed EDITION NUMBER: 105/195 MEASUREMENTS: Paper: 39.5" x 27.25" Fra...

Louise BOURGEOIS (1911-2010) Sheaves, 1985 Original lithograph Signed on the plate On Arches vellum, 31 x 21 cm (c. 12 x 8 in) REFERENCES: Wye Smith Catalogue Raisonné #79-2 INFOR...

Raoul Ubac Title: Untitled Composition Medium: Color Lithograph Year: 1972 Size: 14.9 x 21.8 inches Notes: Centerfold and verso printed as published Publisher: Maeght, Paris Unsigned...

Roy Lichtenstein 1970-1980 (Hand Signed and dated by Roy Lichtenstein), 1981 Offset lithograph. Hand signed and dated in ink Hand-signed by artist, H...

Artist: Stanley Hayter, British (1901 - 1988) Title: Allegro from the Peace Portfolio Year: 1970 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition Size: 175 Image Size: 17.2...

Artist: Louisa Chase, American (1951 - 2016) Title: Hands (Black and White) Year: 1984 Medium: Etching, Signed and Numbered in Pencil Edition: 25 Paper Size: 12 x 12 Inches (30.48 x ...

"Musee National d'Art Moderne" is a po ster by Victor Brauner for an exhibition of his work in Paris. It features abstracted heads in yellow, orange, and blue, with a border in pastel pink, green, blue, and yellow. It is framed with gold moulding. 33 1/2" x 19 5/8" art 40 1/2" x 26" frame Victor Brauner was born in Piatra Neamt, in 1903, and died in Paris, in 1966. He was the son of a timber manufacturer from Piatra Neamt who settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended the elementary school. When his family returned to the country (1914), he continued his studies at the evangelical school in Braila; he began to be interested in zoology in that period. He attended the Art School in Bucharest (1919-1921) and H. Igiroseanu’s private school of painting. He visited Falticeni and Balcic and started painting landscapes à la Cézanne. Then, as he testified himself, he went through all the stages: "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist". On September 26, 1924, the Mozart Galleries in Bucharest hosted his first personal exhibition. In that period he met poet Ilarie Voronca, together with whom he founded the "15HP" magazine. It was in this magazine that Brauner published the manifesto "The pictopoetry" and the article "The surrationalism". He painted and exhibited "Christ at the Cabaret" (in the manner of Graosz) and "The Girl in the Factory" (in the manner of Holder). He participated to the "Contemporanul" exhibition (November 1924). In 1925 he undertook his first journey to Paris, from where he returned in 1927. In the period 1928-1931 he was a contributor of the "Unu" magazine (an avant-garde periodical of Dadaist and Surrealist conceptions), which published reproductions of most of his paintings and graphic works: "clear drawings and portraits made by Victor Brauner to his friends, poets and writers" (Jaques Lessaigne - "Painters I Knew"). In 1930 he settled in Paris, where he met Brancusi, who initiated him into the photographic art. In that same period he became a friend of the Romanian poet Benjamin Fondane and met Yves Tanguil, who would later introduce him to the circle of the Surrealists. He lived on Moulin Vert St., in the same building as Giacometti and Tanguil. He painted "Self-portrait with a plucked eye", a premonitory theme. In 1933, Andre Breton opened Brauner’s first personal exhibition in Paris, at the Pierre Gallery. The theme of the eye was omnipresent: "Mr. K’s power of concentration" and "The strange case of Mr. K" are paintings that Andre Breton compared with Alfred de Jarry’s play "Ubu Roi", "a huge, caricature-like satire of the bourgeoisie". In 1935 he returned to Bucharest. He joined the ranks of the Communist Party for a short while, without a very firm conviction. On April 7, 1935, he opened a new personal exhibition at the Mozart Galleries. Sasa Pana wrote about it in his autobiographical novel "Born in 02": "April 7, 1935… An exhibition surrealist in character. The catalogue shows 16 paintings; they are accompanied by verses, surrealist images that are exquisite by their bizarreness - they are perhaps the creations of automatic dictation and they certainly bear no connection to the painting itself. They are written in French, but their colorful taste remains in the Romanian translation too. The exhibition brought about many interesting articles and takings of position regarding Surrealism in arts and literature." Another remark about Brauner’s participation to Surrealist exhibitions: "Despite its appearance of abstract formula,… this trend is a point a transition to the art that is to come." (R. Trost, in the"Rampa" of April 14, 1935) In the "Cuvantul liber" of April 20, 1935, Miron Paraschivescu wrote in the article "Victor Brauner’s exhibition": "In contrast to what one may see, for instance, in the neighboring exhibition halls, Victor Brauner’s painting means integration, an attitude that is a social one, as far as art allows it. For V. Brauner takes attitude through the very character and ideology of his art." On April 27, he created the illustrations for Gelu Naum’s poetry collection - "The Incendiary Traveler" and "The Freedom to Sleep on the Forehead". In 1938 he returned to France. On August 28 he lost his left eye in a violent argument between Dominguez and Esteban Frances. Brauner attempted to protect Esteban and was hit by a glass thrown by Dominguez: the premonition became true. That same year, he met Jaqueline Abraham, who was to become his wife. He created a series of paintings called "lycanthropic" or sometimes "chimeras". He left Paris in 1940, together with Pierre Malbille. He lived for a while in Perpignan, at Robert Rius’, then at Cant-Blage (Eastern Pyrenees) and at Saint Feliu d’Amont, where he was forcibly secluded. However, he kept in touch with the Surrealists that had taken refuge in Marseille. In 1941, he was granted the permission to settle in Marseille. Seriously ill, he was hospitalized at the "Paradis" clinic. He painted "Prelude to a civilization" (now in the Gelman collection). After the war, he took part to the Venice biannual exhibition; he traveled to Italy. In 1959, he settled in the workshop on Lepic St. In 1961 he traveled to Italy again. He settled in Varengeville, where he spent most of his time working. In 1965 he created an ensemble of object-paintings full of inventiveness and vivacity, grouped under the titles "Mythologie" and "Fêtes des mères...

Sam Francis, American (1923 - 1994) - Untitled (SF-355), Portfolio: Papierski Portfolio, Year: 1992, Medium: Lithograph on BFK Rives, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 50...

Screen print realized by Mino Meno in 1980s. Hand signed lower right. Numbered lower left. Edition of 100. Excellent condition.

Robert RAUSCHENBERG Cardbirds, 1972 exhibition, rare original poster For the exhibition "Cardbirds" at the Sonnabend Gallery Signed in the plate framed in walnut. 21 x26.5" framed. ...

Beverly Pepper, American (1922 - 2020) - Untitled, Year: 1987, Medium: Etching, signed and numbered in pencil, Image Size: 22 x 16.25 inches, Size: 37 x 26.25 in. (93.98 x 66.68 cm)

Artist: Salvador Dali Title: Sports Medium: Lithograph in colors on Arches paper Year: 1973 Edition: XXXV/CI Sheet Size: 18 7/8" x 23 7/8" Image Size: 16" x 19" Signature: Hand signe...

Work of the Spanish artist SALVADOR DALI. Engraving of the series LA VIDA ES SUEÑO. Printed signature and date, as issued Catalog. OFFICIAL CATALOG GRAPHYC WORKS BY ALBERT FIELD Page...

Joan Miro (1893-1983) Cat, Small Bird and Black Hand, 1970 Original lithograph Printed signature in the plate On vellum 83 x 60 cm (c. 33 x 24 in) Excellent condition

Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Title: Femme Accoudee au Fauteuil Year: 1982 Medium: Lithograph on Arches paper Size: 28.5 x 21.5 inches Edition: 1000, plus proofs Condition: Good ...

Fantasy, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, titled 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...

"Homage to the Square - Portfolio 2, Folder 5, Image 1" from the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 origina...