Teruko Yokoi: Seasons at Hollis Taggart brings together paintings and works on paper from the mid-1950s through the early 2000s. The exhibition follows Yokoi’s attention to seasonal change across five decades, from her early drawings in New York to the landscapes, blossoms and nocturnal compositions of her later years in Bern.
As a child in Japan, Teruko walked through fields and forests with her father, a calligrapher and poet. They called these outings “haiku hiroi,” or “collecting haiku,” looking to their surroundings for inspiration. She continued the practice throughout her life and sometimes described her paintings as poems about nature.
The exhibition opens with ink drawings made during her formative years in the United States, where she studied under Hans Hofmann in New York after leaving San Francisco. In The Beresford at 211 Central Park West (1955/1956), branches and architecture are rendered in quick brushstrokes and washes of India ink. Alongside these observed scenes, her drawings of 1955–57 show her developing an abstract language grounded in Japanese brushwork.
By the 1960s, color and calligraphic marks had become central to her paintings. Haiga works like Spring festival (1966) places pale inscriptions across a broad green field, while the later egg tempera June (1989) gathers rounded, blossom-like forms above sweeping bands of green. Other works return to autumn foliage, darkened landscapes and the vertical rhythms of trees. Throughout Seasons, these recurring subjects offer a way to consider how Teruko joined close observation with recollection, giving familiar aspects of nature new form over time.