Toko Shinoda
Took the sumi brush of classical calligraphy into abstraction, and worked until she was 107.
Toko Shinoda was born in Manchuria in 1913 and was taught calligraphy by her father from the age of six. She trained in the classical discipline, then broke with its requirement of legibility, and from the 1950s — including two years in New York, where she met the Abstract Expressionists — made abstract works using sumi ink and the calligrapher's brush, in which a single black stroke is set against empty paper, sometimes with a line of silver, platinum or vermilion. She worked into her second century and died in 2021 at a hundred and seven.
Two categories dominate and are frequently confused. The unique sumi paintings on paper are the top of the market. Beneath them are the lithographs, published in editions of usually thirty to a hundred and, crucially, hand-embellished by the artist after printing with additional brushwork in ink and metallic pigment, so every impression genuinely differs and each requires individual assessment. Sumi on paper is light-sensitive and cannot be cleaned. Signature, seal and pencil numbering should be present, and the market runs principally through Japan and the United States.
If you own a work by Toko Shinoda
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.