Shinoda Toko (1913-2021) | Untitled

“Certain forms float up in my mind’s eye. Aromas, a blowing breeze, a rain drenched gust of wind, the air in motion, my heart in motion. I try to capture these vague, evanescent images of the instant and put them into vivid form.”

— Shinoda Toko

Born in China in 1913 and raised in Japan, Shinoda Toko developed an active interest in the long-standing tradition of calligraphy from a young age to which her works on paper from the 1930s attest. Frustrated with the limitations imposed by the rules of traditional calligraphy, Shinoda began to experiment with abstraction and to play with the formal qualities of Japanese kanji characters after the Second World War. She soon gained international recognition, and in 1954, she was invited to present one of her works at the Japanese Calligraphy exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Drawn to the dynamic forward-thinking and liberal-minded nature of the New York art scene, Shinoda moved to the US in 1956, where she remained for two years. During her time in the US, Shinoda travelled the country and went to Europe, holding solo shows at numerous cultural venues, including the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and Galerie La Hune in Paris. Upon her return to Japan and inspired by the concepts and principles of American Abstract Expressionism, Shinoda transformed her style into a purely abstract and rhythmic form whilst retaining the core materials used in calligraphy, namely ink, brush and paper.

Shinoda’s ink of choice was sumi, which she applied onto a white background, using a large range of different brushes, in varying degrees of intensity, depending on the quantity of water with which she mixed the ink, thereby creating depth and dimensionality. In the 1960s, Shinoda took up printmaking and employed lithography as another medium for her work.

Shinoda’s works are held in museum collections across the globe, including the British Museum in London, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.