The Portland Art Museum is hosting the first major museum retrospective of Yoshida Chizuko (1924–2017), a pioneering Japanese modernist painter and printmaker. The exhibition features over 100 works, including early oil paintings, monotypes, woodblock prints, lithographs, and mixed media pieces, many never before exhibited. It traces her career from avant-garde abstraction in the 1940s and 1950s through op art and photoetchings in the 1960s and 1970s to nature-inspired late works, and includes a planned major acquisition from the Yoshida family estate.
This retrospective matters because it corrects a historical oversight: Yoshida Chizuko, widely regarded as the most avant-garde member of the renowned Yoshida family of artists, has long been overshadowed by her male relatives, including her father-in-law Yoshida Hiroshi and husband Yoshida Hodaka. By centering her story, the exhibition and accompanying publication challenge established narratives about 20th-century Japanese printmaking and highlight the contributions of a radical woman artist whose prolific six-decade career deserves recognition within international modernism.