Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking - Dulwich Picture Gallery

Boy! was I grateful I got to see this beautiful and interesting exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery on its last day, before it closed. I found it an interesting and 'challenging' show, on so many levels!

The works featured were those of three generations of the Yoshida family: father Hiroshi, brothers Fujio and Toshi, Hodaka Chizuko Toshi's wife and Ayomi, Toshi and Hodaka Chizuko's daughter.

All three generations of these artists used traditional woodblock printing as the fundamental basis of their practice, although they all individually, refined and added techniques and styles, modifying and enhancing their prints.

The curation of the exhibition, foregrounding how the prints evolved and developed through time, made the exhibition even more interesting, and the inclusion of a video showing the processes involved together with a display of tools was riveting! I loved the feeling that the spiritual and practical were both valued elements of the process, of the organic natural tools used and that the tradition stretched back to time immemorial and was such a respectful important aspect of creative, spiritual life.

Hiroshi Yoshida printed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He travelled extensively and created interesting, complex prints of many places in the world. My feeling was that his prints of Japan were the most successful, delighting with a delicacy and sensitivity of composition and wonderful mastery of light - particularly at dawn and dusk - which gives the works life:

Ayomi, his granddaughter, contributed an utterly contemporary woodblock print installation in the last gallery exhibition room, from 2024.

Toshi and Hodaka Chizuko both combined woodblock printing with lithography and etching techniques. Their works became increasingly abstract and reflected world changes in many ways.

The exhibition also referenced the existence of a rich, vibrant and organic longstanding dialogue between (what we, in the UK consider) an extremely static form of traditional Japanese artwork and the West's more flexible and 'mobile' (as we like to think of ourselves) cutting edge contemporary work,

particularly the abstraction and pop-art of the US and the psychedelia of the 1960s/70s.

This dialogue led to exciting and technically complex synergy, culminating in a number of works which both surprised and challenged my (apologies, stereotyped and hackneyed) understanding of Japanese printmaking.

It was a vibrant show that was full of life and energies, that challenged MY stereotyped static view of Japanese woodblock prints and has helped to enrich my aesthetic appreciation and experience.

Thank you Yoshida family and Dulwich Picture Gallery.