Toshiko Uchima

Toshiko Uchima (Japanese 内間俊子) (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. After her family returned to Japan in the late 1930’s, she attended Kobe College and studied with the painter Ryōhei Koiso. and was one of the first women to join the Democratic Artists Association (Demokrāto), 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. and continued to produce prints for several years.

In the mid-1960’s, she turned to collage as a primary medium 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. 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

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions Striped House Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1994 Grenchen International Print Triennale, 1958 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 Centre Pompidou, Paris, "Japon des avant-gardes 1910-1970," 1986 (Sphinx) Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, "Demokrato 1957: Liberation Art in Postwar Japan," 1999 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)