Toshiko Uchima () (26 October 1918 – 18 December 2000) was a Japanese-American artist. She worked in a variety of media, including collage, box assemblage, oil paintings, woodblock prints and drawings.
Early life and career Uchima was born Toshiko Aohara on 26 October 1918 in Japanese-occupied northeast China and raised in the expatriate Japanese community in Dalian (known to the Japanese as "Dairen"), where she studied drawing and painting at the Dairen Art Studio.Wechsler, Jeffrey ed. Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945-1970. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997). p. 178. After her family returned to Japan in the late 1930’s, she attended Kobe College and studied with the painter Ryōhei Koiso. In the early 1950’s, Uchima, living in Tokyo, exhibited oil paintings at the Yomiuri Independent ShowWatanuki Ltd./Toki-no-Wasuremono. Uchima Ansei and Uchima Toshiko. Exhibition Catalog, 2018, p. 19. and was one of the first women to join the Democratic Artists Association (Demokrāto), a group of artists in different media founded by noted Japanese avant-garde artist Ei Q. As a member of Demokrāto, she made the acquaintance of, among others, art critic Sadajirō Kubo and poet Shūzō Takiguchi, whose poems, together with a portfolio of original prints, including Uchima’s, appeared in a 1954 limited edition work titled "Sphinx."
In 1955, she married Ansei Uchima, an artist best known as a woodblock printmaker. That year she co-founded, with Chizuko Yoshida, Reika Iwami and others, the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai (Japanese Women’s Print Association). She exhibited in its annual shows from 1956 to 1965. She also exhibited in the Grenchen International Print Biennale in 1958. In 1959, she left Japan with her husband and one-year-old son. The family settled in New York City in 1960. She participated in "Japan’s Modern Prints - Sosaku Hanga," the first comprehensive exhibition of sōsaku hanga from the early twentieth century to the present, in 1960 at the Art Institute of Chicago,Art Institute of Chicago. Japan’s Modern Prints - Sosaku Hanga. Exhibition Catalogue, 1960. and continued to produce prints for several years.
In the mid-1960’s, she turned to collage as a primary medium and, later, also produced box assemblages, using "objects as disparate as antique dolls, postage stamps, seashells, feathers and miniature angelic figures, each with a unique memory and history arranged into a ‘poetic theater’ which tells the story of times gone by and the impermanence of life."Wiliamsburg Art & Historical Center. Friends and Mentors. Exhibition Catalogue, 2001. She regularly exhibited her collage and assemblage work in solo and group shows in New York and Japan.
In 1982, her husband suffered a stroke that ended his career. Uchima spent much of her time over the next 18 years caring for him. She continued to produce work in her limited time and exhibited her work throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. She died on 18 December 2000.
Selected Collections
United States
Whitney Museum of American Art Brooklyn Museum RISD Museum Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin Smith College Museum of Art Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University Grinnell College Museum of Art Princeton University Marquand Library (Sphinx) Cincinnati Art Museum
Japan
Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, Utsunomiya, Japan Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum, Japan Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan
Other
Museo de Zaragoza, Spain
Selected exhibitions
Solo exhibitions Striped House Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1994 Cordy Gallery, New York, 1975 Shirota Gallery, Tokyo, 1976 Suzuki Gallery, New York, 1976, 1982, 1990 Ginza Sanbangai Gallery, Tokyo, 1981 Michigan State University,1963
Selected group exhibitions The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, Traveling Exhibition "Ansei and Toshiko Uchima: Weaving Colors and Memories," 2026. Grenchen International Print Triennale, 1958 Art Institute of Chicago, "Modern Japanese Prints – Sōsaku Hanga," 1960 Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, "American Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945-1970," 1997 (traveling) Portland Art Museum, "Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956-1965, Japan’s Women Printmakers," 2020-21 RISD Museum, "Defying Boundaries: Women in Japanese Art," 2024 Scholten Japanese Art, "Creative Connections: Sosaku-Hanga Artists & New York," 2024-25 Pratt Graphic Art Center, Japanese Women’s Print Show, 1965 Society of American Graphic Artists, 47th Annual Exhibition of The Society of American Graphic Artists, New York, 1966 Centre Pompidou, Paris, "Japon des avant-gardes 1910-1970," 1986 (Sphinx)Centre Georges Pompidou. Japon des avant-gardes: 1910-1970. Paris: Ėditions du Centre Pompidou, 1986. p. 518. Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, "Demokrato 1957: Liberation Art in Postwar Japan," 1999 Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, "Q Ei and the Avant-Garde Artists," 2014, "Japanese Women Artists of Avant-Garde Movements 1950-1975," 2005 Nerima Art Museum Collection Exhibition, Tokyo 2016 Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, "Women’s March," 2018 Striped House Museum of Art, Tokyo, with Ansei Uchima, 1986, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2012 Toki-no-Wasuremono Gallery, Tokyo, with Ansei Uchima, 2018 Hunterdon Art Center, New Jersey, "Reflections, Images," three-person exhibition with Ansei Uchima and Isamu Noguchi, 1980 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, New York, "Friends and Mentors" (with Jack Lenor Larsen, Isamu Noguchi, Jerry Rudquist, Toshiko Takaezu, Ansei Uchima and Esteban Vicente), 2001 Yomiuri Independent Exhibitions, Tokyo, 1952, 1953
Selected publications Hanga Geijutsu, "Noteworthy Exhibition Uchima Ansei, Toshiko: Tracing the Creative Paths of Two Artists." No. 211, Spring 2026 Hanga Geijutsu, "Pioneers of Women Printmakers". No. 208, Summer 2025 Kuwahara, Noriko. Postwar Printmaking Exchanges between Japan and the United States: 1945-1965. (Tokyo: Serika Shobo, 2024) The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama; Hekinan City Fujii Tatsukichi Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. Ansei and Toshiko Uchima: Weaving Colors and Memories. Exhibition Catalogue. (Tokyo: The Tokyo Shimbun, 2026) Wechsler, Jeffrey ed. Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian American Artists and Abstraction 1945-1970. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997)
References