The Portland Art Museum has opened the first solo U.S. exhibition of late Japanese artist Yoshida Chizuko (1924-2017), featuring over 100 woodblock prints and paintings, many never before displayed publicly. The exhibition, curated by Asian art curator Jeannie Kenmotsu, highlights Yoshida's avant-garde work that pushed the boundaries of painting and printmaking within Japan's male-dominated postwar art world.
This exhibition matters because it corrects a historical oversight: Yoshida Chizuko, though a member of the renowned Yoshida artist family, has been overshadowed by her male relatives and overlooked internationally. The show is part of a broader reappraisal of female artists from Japan's postwar era, bringing attention to an artist who pioneered abstraction in a conservative art establishment and who was denied access to major art universities due to her gender. It also underscores the Portland Art Museum's role as a leading repository of modern Japanese prints in North America.