HMM

Throughout his career, Chicago-based Yoshida was fascinated by metamorphosis and transformation. He was an important teacher and mentor to his students and friends who admired him as much for his work as for his perspective as a collector of American folk art. In the late 1960s he produced paintings and collages based on “specimens” extracted from comic books and trade catalogues. These cropped details from larger compositions evolve their own suggestive formal analogies and echoes. HMM dates from the later part of his life, when his compositions became more open, free, and mysterious. It is a tour-de-force of spontaneous suggestive narrative revealing Yoshida’s wit, superb design intelligence, and transformative way of seeing. Text bubbles declare just four expressions—“OOF!” “UMM-HMM” “?” and “HMM.