Joichi Hoshi was born in 1913 in Niigata, Japan. He died on June 17, 1979 in Tokyo, Japan. After teaching in Taiwan for 13 years, Joichi Hoshi returned to Japan in 1946 and began to study oil painting at Musashino College of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1956, at age 49.
Later he taught himself woodblock printmaking. He started his printmaking career by depicting star constellations and galaxies. In the early 1970s, he began to specialize in images of trees. He is considered the “father” of Japanese tree prints. The tree prints are intricately made using the technique of the traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking and are sometimes refined with silver or gold prigments. Joichi Hoshi exhibited at the Tokyo International Print Biennials in 1959, 1961 and 1963 and at the International Print Biennal of Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1967.
There are limited edition and open edition prints by Joichi Hoshi. For the limited editions, a typical edition size is between 100 and 200. The limited edition prints are signed, numbered, dated and sometimes titled in pencil.
Collections
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Haifa Museum, Israel
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of Far Eastern Art, Berlin
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Rockefeller Foundation, New York
