Toko Shinoda

Toko Shinoda is a Japanese artist, printmaker, and essayist. Born into an artistic family, her cousin is the film director Masahiro Shinoda, and her nephew is architect Shigeru Wakayama.

Toko Shinoda was born in Dailin (formally in Manchuria), China, in 1913. She began training in calligraphy under her father at the age of six and later attended an all-girls school, where she further developed her calligraphy skills mostly through self-study. In the 1950s, Shinoda engaged in exchanges with avant-garde writers associated with the Academy of Calligraphy Art. In 1956, she moved to the United States during the peak of abstract expressionist painting, and she held numerous exhibitions across the country.

Toko Shinoda's elegant ink painting style challenged the conventions of traditional calligraphy. Using primarily sumi ink, Shinoda often incorporated backdrops of gold, silver, or platinum leaf, and occasionally added streaks of vermilion ink. During her time in the United States, Shinoda's works received high acclaim. In 1958, she returned to Japan to continue her artistic pursuits and also began engaging in lithographic printing. Her work continued to be exhibited and appreciated in the West.

Her works are widely collected by numerous art institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art (New York, the USA), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, the USA), Brooklyn Museum (New York, the USA) , Metropolitan Museum (New York, the USA), The National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo, Japan), The British Museum

(London, England), The National Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA) , The Singapore Art Museum (Singapore), The National Museum of Singapore

(Singapore), The Cincinnati Art Museum (Ohio, the USA), The Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, the USA) among others.

Toko Shinoda passed away in Tokyo in 2021 at the age of 107.