Mayumi Koide

Mayumi Koide (born 1947, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan) is a senior contemporary Japanese printmaker working primarily in etching, with a long-running practice that has been documented through the Japan Print Association and the New Art Association membership channels and most recently through the 68th CWAJ Print Show 2025. Now in her late seventies, she remains an active member of the principal Japanese print associations and continues to produce new etchings. She trained under the printmaker Kaori Sekine and at the Yokohama Museum of Art, and has been based in Kanagawa Prefecture for her current practice.

Her current production, exemplified by 'Being Lured by Timbre' (音色に誘われて, 2024, 50 × 43 cm), centres on etching compositions where the technical pulled-line of the intaglio plate is treated as the primary visual element. The Japanese title — 'Lured by Timbre' or 'Drawn by the Sound's Tone' — gestures towards the synaesthetic register that her later prints occupy: the suggestion of music or sound rendered as a visual texture in the carved-then-printed line of the etched plate.

Koide's training under Kaori Sekine connects her practice to the Japanese postwar etching tradition that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a serious independent print medium alongside lithography and woodcut. Her affiliations with the Japan Print Association (Nihon Hanga Kyokai, the principal national printmaking association) and the New Art Association (Shinseisaku-kyokai, a multi-medium contemporary art association) place her within the institutional network that has sustained Japanese printmaking activity across the postwar period.

The scale of her work — moderate intaglio sheets of around 50 × 40 cm — is characteristic of mid-career Japanese etching practice: large enough to read as a substantial autonomous image but within the practical limits of a single intaglio plate. The 'Being Lured by Timbre' print continues themes of musical-and-visual association that have featured in her earlier work circulated through the Japan Print Association annual exhibitions.

Within the contemporary Japanese print scene Koide represents the senior generation of working etchers — printmakers who entered practice in the 1970s, established their associations with the Japan Print Association and New Art Association in the 1980s and 1990s, and have continued producing etchings into their seventies. Her recent CWAJ catalogue selection (2024 Print No. 074) confirms her continuing activity within the principal annual juried showcase for current Japanese print activity.

Beyond the CWAJ catalogue and Japan Print Association membership, biographical detail on Koide is not surfaced through public English-language channels. Her recent CWAJ inclusion is the principal verification of her current practice and the timing of her 'Being Lured by Timbre' print.