Saru Gallery
       Japanese Prints & Japanese Paintings

Biography Yoshida, Tôshi (1911 - 1995)

As a young boy Tôshi Yoshida contracted polio, which paralyzed one of his legs. This was a handicap throughout his life. The other, even more important influence on his life was his father, Hiroshi Yoshida. To quote from A Japanese legacy, four generations of Yoshida family artists: "Family, that bulwark against professional trials and social tribulations, offered Tôshi only partial comfort. His father - who was also his teacher and most ardent critic - sought to mold Tôshi and his art into a second-generation version of himself and his own highly successful naturalism.[...] Only with Hiroshi's death in 1950 did Tôshi break somewhat free from the family patriarch and began practicing a more expressive style." And: "In all of his styles and subjects, Tôshi preferred natural forms and manners of depiction that resonate with peacefulness." (op. cit., p. 73.)

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