Hodaka Yoshida1926~1995 吉田穂高

Hodaka Yoshida (1926-1995) was a Japanese printmaker born in Tokyo as the second son of shin-hanga master Hiroshi Yoshida. After earning a university degree in biology and beginning his career as an oil painter, he turned to woodblock printing in 1950 and joined the Japan Print Association in 1952. Breaking from his family’s shin-hanga tradition, he became a leader of the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement, exploring silkscreen, etching, lithography, monoprinting, and photo-transfer to produce surreal, mythological, primitive, and abstract imagery. He taught woodblock printmaking at American universities including Hawaii (1957), won the Grand Prize at the Seoul International Print Biennale (1972), received the Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor (1990), and exhibited at major international biennales in Tokyo, Lugano, Ljubljana, and Ibiza. He produced more than 600 prints across his 45-year career.