Ginger
- Date:
- 1953
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Key value factors: Edition order (first Watanabe/Doi printing vs. posthumous reprints) is crucial. Snow scenes, night views, and bijin-ga typically command premiums. Publisher seals and artist signatures authenticate first editions.
The ginger plant's architectural form, with its upright stems, blade-shaped leaves, and compact flower clusters, provides Yoshida with a subject that bridges the botanical and the sculptural. This 1953 color woodblock print captures the plant's structural logic, from the thick rhizome-fed stems to the pointed leaf tips that catch light along their edges. Ginger (shoga) has been cultivated in Japan for centuries as both a culinary staple and a medicinal ingredient, and its presence in a fine-art print acknowledges the plant's cultural significance beyond the kitchen. Yoshida's color application is deliberate, with greens that shift in temperature from warm at the base to cool at the leaf margins.
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Ginger was created by Fujio Yoshida (吉田ふじを) in 1953.
Ginger depicts birds & flowers and still life.
