Yoshida Tôshi (1911-1995)

Yoshida Tôshi was the eldest son of Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950), who taught him his art from the age of 14. From a young age, he had been familiarized with printmaking techniques through contact with the artisans in his father's studio. Having contracted polio, which paralyzed one of his legs, he was unable to play with other children and spent part of his solitary childhood sketching under his parents' guidance. His mother, Fujio, was also a respected artist, but it was under his father's influence that he grew up. His father had co-founded the Pacific Painting Association (Taiheiyô-Gakai), and it was there that Tôshi studied from 1932 to 1935. In the 1930's, he traveled extensively with his father around the world and later on his own, notably in North America, Mexico, and Africa. Upon his return, he worked with his father at Yoshida Studio and took over its management after the latter's death in 1950.
His early works closely resembled his father's style, and he continued in this naturalistic vein until the 1950's. In 1952, he began creating larger-format abstract works on his own, without the assistance of his team, in the sôsaku-hanga style, producing nearly 300 of them by the early 1970s. In the 1960's, he returned to a more realistic style, notably depicting scenes of wildlife, particularly African wildlife. In the 1980's, he illustrated a series of children's books on African fauna (Dobutsu Ehon Shirizu). In 1966, he published a book with the artist Yuki Rei on printmaking techniques: "Japanese Print Making: A Handbook of Traditional and Modern Techniques," which was highly influential on many artists and remains a standard reference work. Yoshida Tôshi died in 1995 after a long illness. During his illness, he continued to run the studio and supervise the printing. Prints from this period no longer bear a handwritten signature, but a signature made with a stamp.