SHIZUKO YOSHIKAWA

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the artist, October 2018, Zurich. We thank Mrs. Shizuko Yoshikawa for her kind support.

Provenance:
- Galerie Zimmermannhaus, Brugg.
- By descent to the present owner, since then private collection Switzerland.

The Japanese artist Shizuko Yoshikawa was born in Omuta in 1934. After studying English literature and architecture in Japan, she moved to Ulm in 1961, where she studied for a year at the Hochschule für Gestaltung. Next came a move to Zurich in 1962, where she still lives today. In 1970 she finally decided to work in the creative arts. In 1977 she received an art bursary from the Canton of Zurich, and two years later was granted the IBM Fellowship. In 1989 Yoshikawa was visiting professor at the University of Arizona and in 1992 the artist was awarded the Camille Graeser Prize.
Shizuko Yoshikawa belongs, along with Max Bill, Friedrich Karl Lohse, Camille Graeser, Gottfried Honegger and Mageruite Hersberger, to the group of Zurich Concrete Artists. Like her artist colleagues, she began in the field of graphic design, before she turned to abstract, concrete art. She worked as far as possible in series. Equally, she carried out various artworks on built or public space projects. In Yoshikawa, however, there is a contradiction, which sets her works apart from those of her colleagues: she is deeply rooted in the Far Eastern philosophy of life and at the same time has taken on the strictly functional orientation of the Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung. In each of her paintings, the artist brings together and balances these ‘Two Energies’, which is also the name of one of her series.
The starting position of all her works is the “Netzsturkturbild” (Net as pictorial structure) “A net can be defined as a weave of virtual infinity, as a flowing pattern, open and extendible, and of equal value in all its parts. Viewed in this sense, the net corresponds to the Far Eastern concept of life. The artist brings it together with fundamental principles of construction which themselves can be combined and can enter the method-based world of Concrete Art.” (quote: Margit Weinber-Staber, in: Exh. Cat. Shizuko Yoshikawa. Struktur Feld Raum, Museum für Konkrete Kunst Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt 1998, p. 1 of text).
The series “Energien aus der Leere” (Energy from Emptiness), of which the present work is a part, was produced in the 1990s. In this work she places the canvas on its corner and produces increasingly open structures. Through reflections and rotations, the symmetry is increasingly suppressed, the colouring is more dynamic and produces a great sense of depth. Thus, as Shizko Yoshikawa paints slowly and to a great degree of accuracy, so the viewer must take their time in order to grasp her meditative works.