Shizuko Yoshikawa: Possible Progressions

Marlborough London is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom dedicated to Shizuko Yoshikawa (1934, Ōmuta, Japan – 2019, Zurich, Switzerland)

Yoshikawa was one of the few women to gain centre recognition in the art movement of Constructivist and Concrete Art in the 20th century. The exhibition features her signature relief sculptures, paintings, drawings and conceptual colour studies spanning four decades of the artist’s career.

With the new attention given internationally to the reintroduction of women artists who worked in the Abstract Avant-Garde movements, Shizuko Yoshikawa’s innovative work has recently received new recognition.

Yoshikawa was the first and only female Japanese student at the prestigious Ulm School of Design (1953–1968), Germany, which had been co-founded by Max Bill, a leading figure in postwar geometric abstraction, to continue the legacy of the Bauhaus.

While co-organizing in 1960 the legendary World Design Conference (WoDeCo) in Tokyo, the young Shizuko Yoshikawa met leading protagonists of the “International Style” and progressive design movement, among them the Argentinian Tomás Maldonado who was then rector at the Ulm school. Maldonado introduced a focus on scientific principles and system theory, later strongly reflected in Yoshikawa’s own work, as in her relief permutations and mathematical approach to composition.

Yoshikawa studied at the visual communication department, where she contributed to Otl Aicher’s innovative corporate design for the German airline Lufthansa. In Ulm, she was frequently exoticized as a Japanese female student, yet decided not to return to her homeland, anticipating professional limits in Japan’s hierarchical and male dominated design world for a woman practitioner. In 1962, Yoshikawa moved to Zurich, where she took a job in the studio of her future husband, Swiss graphic designer Josef Müller-Brockmann. He was a pioneer of the International Typographic Style, which expanded on the modernist typographic innovations of the 1920s that had emerged from Russian Constructivism, De Stijl and the Bauhaus. 

🎫 Entry

More information at https://www.marlboroughgallerylondon.com/exhibition/shizuko-yoshikawa-possible-progressions

No need to book tickets - just turn up on the day. 📅 Date: Til 18th May 2024