Maeda Toshiro

Maeda Toshirō (前田藤四郎, 1904-1990) was a Japanese printmaker associated with the sōsaku-hanga (creative print) movement, whose work moved over his career from early figurative and surrealist imagery toward the abstract, geometric compositions for which he is best remembered. He was born in 1904 in Akashi, Hyōgo Prefecture, and graduated from the Kobe Higher Commercial School in 1927. For much of his working life he earned his living as a commercial and graphic designer in Osaka — first at the Matsuzakaya department store, then at the Seiunsha printing and advertising firm through the 1930s, and during the war years as a designer for the Shionogi pharmaceutical company.

Essentially self-taught as a printmaker, Maeda took up linocut and then woodblock after studying Hiratsuka Un'ichi's instructional manual Hanga no gihō, and he was drawn into Osaka's avant-garde art circles of the 1920s, contributing to coterie magazines of the period. He exhibited regularly with the Shun'yōkai (Spring Exhibition Society) from 1929 and became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association), contributing to its collaborative print projects in the late 1930s. In the postwar decades his prints grew increasingly abstract, and his work was shown internationally, including at international print biennales. He died in 1990.