YOKOI, TERUKO. (b. 1927 Nagoya. d. 2020 Bern, Switzerland)
Herbstwald. 1970
oil on canvas
57 5/8 x 27 3/4 in. / 146.4 x 70.5 cm
signed and dated, lower left
yocoll0052
“nostalgia appears to be a longing for a place but is actually a yearning for a different time—the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams…Time out of time…Nostalgia can be a poetic creation, an individual mechanism of survival, a countercultural practice, a poison, and a cure.
Svetlana Boym from The Future of Nostalgia, 2001
Born into a family in Japan versed in the traditional practice of haiku (focused on a brief moment in time), Teruko would leave her early successes in Nagoya and Tokyo for San Francisco in 1954. There she would exhibit with the Palace of Legion of Honor while studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. Speaking little English in a post internment camp era in Northern California, she would receive a grant enabling her to move to New York where she came to know Kenzo Okada, Joan Mitchell and Mark Rothko. She quickly incorporated the memories of the landscapes lost in Japan post WWII with a new energy derived from her immersion into the Abstract Expressionist movements including her short term marriage to Sam Francis. Following Francis to Paris, she met Arnold Rudlinger leading to her first major exhibition in Europe at the Kunsthalle, Basel in 1964. Her marriage to Francis would end in 1962, and traveling with a young daughter, she would move to Bern where she would remain resulting in a very prolific period of creativity and production. Her last show would be at the Kunstmuseum, Bern in 2020.
For Further Information
https://kentfineart.net/artists/34-teruko-yokoi/overview/
