Ida, Shoichi

Japanese, 1941-2006

BiographyBorn in Kyoto, Ida worked with a wide variety of media, while specializing in collage and prints. He earned postgraduate degree from the Oil Painting Department of Kyoto Municipal University of Art and lived briefly in Paris, New York and San Francisco. Ida has employed a wide variety of techniques to create prints (i.e., silkscreen, lithography, etching and traditional woodblocks).

An internationally recognized artist, Ida synthesized Eastern philosophy with international art currents. His art has been described as “rich in craft and poetry.” He once said, “Art is not making a beautiful surface, or drawing a realistic apple. Art is getting to the essence, reaching the senses.”

Ida’s work explores “spaces between objects that, seemingly, have no space.” For many years Ida worked on a series titled Surface is Between–Between Vertical and Horizon: Complex Contact–Between Capillary Attraction and Gravity. This work, Flag-Black and Blue, No. 2, is from that series.

Ida clearly explained his philosophy in an interview published in 1987. “The surface can be the paper or canvas or whatever, it is the point of contact between me and the ideas I am working on, or the other material I am working with. Or, an easier way to understand this might be to say that while we are talking now, there is a space between us where communication takes place. That space is important to appreciate—but you can’t really see it, it’s just air. You can’t see the wind either, but if you look at the branches of the tree moving you can see the force of the wind. Through my work I try to make invisible phenomena visible by showing the point of contact.”