19/06/2026
Shizuko Yoshikawa, m259 ‘weisse mitte’ - no. 6 grüngelb zu orange, 1986
Tempera and acrylic on canvas,101 x 101 cm
SHIZUKO YOSHIKAWA Art Basel
1934 Born in Omuta, Japan
2019 Died in Zurich, Switzerland
The artist began her career after completing a BA in English Language and Literature at Tsudajuku College (now Tsuda University) in Tokyo after World War II. In 1958, she was admitted to a master’s program in architecture and product design at Kyōiku University
(now Tsukuba University) in Tokyo. After participating in the organizing team for the World Design Conference (WoDeCo, 1960) in Tokyo as a coordinator and interpreter, she left for Ulm in 1961. At the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (Ulm School of Design), she
was the first and only female Japanese student to study in the visual communication department, where she inter alia contributed to Otl Aicher’s corporate design for the
German airline Lufthansa. Her teachers also included Horst Rittel and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, as well as Josef Müller-Brockmann. In Ulm she sometimes felt that she was viewed with an exoticizing gaze as a Japanese student, yet felt she would have no future as a graphic designer in Japan’s hierarchical design world