A Basket of Lyrical Blossoms “Toko Shinoda: Poetic Flourishes”

About the Exhibition

　Toko Shinoda often mentions how she was attracted by the beauty of the language in the classics she was exposed to in her girlhood. In the 1950s she produced many abstract ink paintings of characters on the theme of poetry. Recalling favorite verses, repeating them aloud, and “writing” them down on paper—it was the process of turning what came to her mind with verses conjuring various scenes into shapes and depicting them in her art. Gradually moving away from the orthographic nature of characters, she aspired to new forms, and the works of “characters” that arose out of that groping form the basis of Toko’s ink painting. What she has been aspired to is her own lines of the heart, and shapes that deeply move those who see them.
　This exhibition presents Toko Shinoda’s works on the theme of poetry, mainly works of “characters” produced in the process of her shift from calligraphy to abstract painting in the 1950s.