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The Print:

Flowering Kale or or Habotan in Japanese, 1953, featuring a striking palette of purple and gray tones contrasted against a yellow and green background, is a bold, and sinuous representation of a floral subject, showcasing a dramatic close-up perspective. The design is from a series created by the artist in the early 1950s, featuring close-up views of flowers common to the Japanese islands. Using traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques, her pictures of the delicate, swirling insides of flowers like irises, gladioluses, and wild ginger border on abstraction.

The Artist: 

Fujio Yoshida (1887-1987) was initially the younger sister (by virtue of his adoption into the family) of Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), and later, his wife. Hiroshi Yoshida oversaw her artistic training as well, enrolling Fujio, then 12 years old and the only female student, in the same painting academy in Tokyo where he trained. Entrusting the director, Koyama Shotaro (1857-1916), to keep an eye on Fujio who was the only female among some thirty male students, In 1903, Hiroshi brought Fujio with him on his second trip around the world, painting and showing their works in numerous exhibitions promoting the novelty brother-sister artistic duo. Literally working side by side, with mirrored artist training and a shared affinity for watercolor landscapes, their painting technique was very similar, and the subjects were frequently only slightly different vantages of the very same views. The pair returned to Japan a little over three years later in February 1907 and married in April.

Fujio’s first woodblock prints were produced shortly after Hiroshi up his own print studio in 1925, when a few of her luminous floral still-life paintings were adapted by professional carvers and printers. The results, while attractive, fell far short of her expressive painterly style and she discontinued making woodblock prints until 1953. They were based on the abstract oils of extreme close-ups of flower, which she began creating in 1949, shortly before Hiroshi’s death in 1950. As the head of the Yoshida family, Hiroshi did not approve of abstract imagery, and it wasn’t until after he died that Fujio, and her son Toshi, felt free to explore the same artistic route that was already pursued by. their son/brother Hodaka Yoshida.

The Historical Context:

Fujio Yoshida made significant contributions to Japanese art as a painter and printmaker, notably as a pioneer among female Japanese artists working in Western-style painting and as a key member of the renowned Yoshida family of artists. She was a pioneering female artist, among the first to adopt Western painting styles and she exhibited her work internationally in the early 1900s. In 1918, she co-founded the Shuyokai (Vermilion Leaf Society), one of Japan’s first associations for female artists, supporting women in the arts. Her works bridged various art movements, as her style represented a transition from traditional still lifes to “organic” abstraction, blending traditional Japanese woodblock techniques (mokuhanga) with a modern, experimental approach bordering on abstract expressionism. And while Fujio began as a painter, she started creating her own woodblock prints in her sixties, after her husband’s death, when she felt more artistic freedom. Her work in this medium is known for its move towards abstraction, particularly her bold, close-up, and highly stylized floral prints, such as the “Flowering Kale” shown in the image above. 

Fujio Yoshida’s works are included in many major and regional museum collections, including  Art Institute of Chicago, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin College), The British Museum and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 

The first scholarly exhibition of her work was in 2002, hosted by the Fuchu Art Museum, and in 2003 the Fukuoka Art Museum held the first major retrospective of her work, showing 130 of her paintings in an exhibition entitled Fujio Yoshida: A Painter of Radiance. An exhibition of her works, including an oil painting and several prints from the author’s personal collection, are expected to be exhibited at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida at the end of the summer.

There have also been a number of museum exhibitions featuring multiple members of the Yoshida family including The Minneapolis Institute of Art’s 2002 exhibition, A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2018 exhibition The Yoshida Family: Three Generations of Japanese Print Artists, the Rijksmuseum’s 2024 exhibition Work by Three Generations of Female Japanese Printmakers (Fujio, and her daughter Chizuko Yoshidad, and her granddaughter Aoyomi Yoshida), and the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s 2024 exhibition Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking (which was the first time her works were shown in the UK).

In addition to the Museums mentioned above, Fujio Yoshida’s works are held in a number of institutions, including the Cincinnati Art Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Tokyo National Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and The British Museum