was a Japanese modernist artist who worked first in oils, and then from 1950 in the woodblock

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

 print medium. From the beginning of his career, he broadened the range of styles and techniques used by Yoshida family artists

Yoshida family artists

The Yoshida family of artists is an important line of Japanese artists that reaches unbroken from the early 19th century to the present.-Overview:...

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Family

His father and mother, Hiroshi Yoshida

Hiroshi Yoshida

was a 20th century Japanese painter and woodblock print maker. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the shin hanga style, and is noted especially for his excellent landscape prints...

 and Fujio Yoshida

Fujio Yoshida

was a Japanese artists. She was the first female artist among the Yoshida family artists.She was the daughter of artist Kasaburo Yoshida and his wife Rui Yoshida. She married artist Hiroshi Yoshida. Trained from an early age in the Western-style, she went on to create both naturalistic and...

, were both leading Western-style artists in Tokyo in oils, watercolors, and from 1925 in shin hanga

Shin hanga

was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods...

 woodblock prints. Hodaka's older brother, Toshi Yoshida, became the heir to the Yoshida Studio and worked in both oils and woodblock prints. Hodaka was supposed to become a scientist, but as the Second World War ended, he defied his father's plans and became, not only an artist, but one who focused on abstraction

Abstraction

Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....

, a style his father disdained. (Skibbe, 11-12) Unlike others in the family, Hodaka's art is quite complex, with an "edgy" feel to it. (Robertson, 114)

Analysis of his work

Instead of having a straight line development, his work moved forward in a series of abrupt stages. For example, his 1955 encounter in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 with primitive Pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian art

Pre-Columbian art is the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas until the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and the time period marked by Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas....

 artifacts and architecture radically reoriented his art. A survey of the total range of his work - about 600 prints over 45 years - reveals distinct periods, each having major changes in subject matter, vocabulary, style, and color pallet. His styles, while always his own, drew from Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, Pop

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

, Photorealism

Photorealism

Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

, and Color Field abstraction. (Allen, et al., 114-119) Broadly speaking most of his prints would be categorized as sosaku hanga

Sosaku hanga

was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods. It advocated the principles of "self-drawn" , "self-carved" and "self-printed" art, stressing the artist, motivated by a desire for self-expression, as the sole creator...

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Main periods:

1950-53 Early Prints - simple modern observations of nature and human nature

1953-54 Buddhist Prints - modern reformulations of traditional Japanese material culture

1955-63 Primitive Prints - abstractions of the primitive in Pre-Columbian forms

1963-66 Folk Prints (Transition A) - witty perspectives on indigenous South American culture

1966-74 Mythology and Landscape Prints - Pop art exposé of modern culture in decline

1974-79 House and Nude Prints (Transition B) - the tension aroused by premodern/modern

1979-84 FMC House Prints - the basic human element in houses from various cultures

1984-91 Recollection Prints (Transition C) - noting old and distressed objects

1991-95 Wall Prints - the human story on the surfaces of old walls

The print technology Hodaka used was not limited to woodblock, but included monoprinting

Monoprinting

Monoprinting is a form of printmaking that has images or lines that can only be made once, unlike most printmaking, where there are multiple originals. There are many techniques of monoprinting...

, wood engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

, copper etching

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

, silkscreen, lithograph, and often employed photo-transfer techniques. In this regard he was a pioneer in Japan in the 1960s and 70's. (Allen, et al., 114-117) His subject matter was drawn from objects in cultures all around the world. In spite of these various dynamics, each of Hodaka's periods is an exploration in the same basic direction, into what might be called modernist expressions of primitive human vitality. (Robertson, 114; Skibbe, 47-49) Individual prints show great artistry in composition and color.

Modernist

In Chapter One of his book, A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern, 1990, Kirk Varnedoe says that modern art has four basic characteristics: (1) the flattened image instead of the illusion of space, (2) fragmentation and repetition in the composition, rather than the complete object, (3) primitivism, in the sense of an artifact revealing something latent deep within ourselves, and (4) the flight of the mind, the freedom to assume any point of departure, or to conceptualize as one wishes. Hodaka’s art exemplifies all four characteristics, and he did this without suppressing his Japanese aesthetic sensibility. Hodaka clearly was a modern Japanese internationalist, and as such he broadened the artistic heritage of the Yoshida family. (www.hodakayoshidaprints.com)

He exhibited mainly in major international art biennials. Hodaka received many awards and prizes, including the Purple Ribbon Decoration bestowed by the Emperor in 1990, and the Order of the Rising Sun

Order of the Rising Sun

The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji of Japan. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese Government, created on April 10, 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight from the rising sun...

, Fourth class, awarded by the Emperor posthumously in 1995. (Skibbe, 20)

Hodaka's wife, Chizuko Yoshida

Chizuko Yoshida

is a Japanese artist. She is a modernist, whose work reflects the development of art in Japan following World War II.She is also important as the middle link in the succession of three generations of women artists in the widely recognized Yoshida family. She is the wife of artist Hodaka Yoshida...

, née Inoue, (1924-) and their daughter Ayomi Yoshida

Ayomi Yoshida

is the youngest artist in the Japanese Yoshida family of artists. She is best known at the present time for her room-sized installations of woodchips that have been created for galleries and museums in Japan and the United States...

(1958-) are both artists, and their son Takasuke (1959-) is an art jewelry maker. (Allen, 10)