About the artist
Yoshitoshi Mori was a 20th century Japanese artist who specialized in kappazuri stencil prints. With winding outlines and emphatic blocks of color, Mori's work is renowned for its spirited expression of traditional subjects through a distinctly modern visual dialect. For many years he belonged to the Mingei folk craft movement, where he produced stencil-dyed textiles and other textile arts. It was not until the 1950s that Mori began to work with paper, yet he quickly became known as one of the foremost artists of the Sosaku Hanga movement. Yoshitoshi Mori is said to have influenced several major 20th-century print artists, including Shiko Munakata and Hiromitsu Takahashi.
Mori created the majority of his prints through kappazuri, a form of stencil printing, layering color and form with self-cut stencils. Through this technique, Mori translated his 30 years of dyeing experience to printmaking, applying the same stencil method used for textiles to paper. Though active during the 20th century, Mori found lasting inspiration in the popular culture of Edo’s floating world. His subjects range from daily life of craftsmen in the lowlands of Edo (the shitamachi) to dramatic portraits of actors, heroes, and beauties.
Yoshitoshi Mori exhibited his works in numerous one-man shows in Japan in the 1960s and took part in 30 international exhibitions between 1957 and 1977. Within the United States, his work can be found in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to name only a few.