Jazz --- Day 12/70

Walk: Hood

Distance: 3.5 miles

Yoshida Chizuko (Japanese, 1924-2017), Jazz, 1954, Woodblock print; ink and colors on paper

Many artists have been inspired by jazz, but, to Ciwt, none have done better capturing the immediacy, the energy and unexpected playfulness of jazz than Yoshida Chizuko has in this early woodblock print 

Chizuko (1924-2017) trained as an oil painter and exhibited long before marrying Yoshida Hodaka and into the most renowned fine art family in Japan in 1953.  After meeting her husband, Chizuko began to explore printmaking and quietly became one of the country's leading female abstract printmakers. Overshadowed by the famous Yoshida brothers, she actually produced the most avant-garde artworks of all the Yoshida family members in the mid-twentieth century.  She also cofounded Joryu Hanga Kyokai, or the Women's Print Association, in 1956, pushing the boundaries of the male-dominated printmaking field in Japan.