Ray Yoshida

Ray Yoshida was an influential American artist celebrated for his distinctive paintings and collages

Biography of Ray Yoshida

Raymond "Ray" Kakuo Yoshida was born in 1930 in Hawaii. After completing his initial studies in Hawaii, he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and later at Syracuse University in New York in 1958. In 1959, he returned to SAIC as a teacher, where he profoundly influenced artists such as Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg, Roger Brown, and Robert Storr.

Yoshida's career featured notable exhibitions, including a major retrospective in 1998 at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, which traveled to The Chicago Cultural Center and the Madison Art Center. His works have been exhibited at David Nolan Gallery, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Fleisher/Ollman, Adam Baumgold Gallery, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Superior Street Gallery, and other esteemed venues. 

Yoshida returned to Hawaii after 2005 due to failing health and passed away on January 10, 2009. Following his death, the retrospective "Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and His Spheres of Influence" was exhibited at SAIC's Sullivan Galleries.

His influence as a professor was significant, mentoring many artists, including members of the Chicago Imagists, and impacting the art scene with his unique and enigmatic style. His personal collection of over 2600 objects and artworks was displayed posthumously in the exhibition "Ray Yoshida's Museum of Extraordinary Values" at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

His works are included in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Ray Yoshida's Art Style

Ray Yoshida was known for his paintings and collages, heavily influenced by comics and his personal collection of folk art and found objects. His paintings often incorporated elements from comics, and his collages were characterized by their graphic nature, arranging "tiny, oddly shaped details of architecture, fabric, hairdos, and other unidentifiable elements" into ordered rows and tiers. Critics have described his collages as "formally captivating, dreamily strange, and comically absurd."

Yoshida's work evolved over the decades. In the early 1960s, he focused on paintings, later developing the "comic collage" in the latter part of the decade. His works in the early 1970s often featured abstracted objects, while his work from the mid-1970s to the 1980s incorporated a stronger figural sense. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Yoshida returned to comic collage pieces and produced a series of oil paintings in his later years.