Oil on canvas, 39 1/2" x 44 1/2"
When Ito died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-five, she was one of the most revered artists in the Chicago art community. Because her luminous and allusive little canvases synthesize cubism and surrealism, they appealed to abstract artists and Imagists alike. Moreover, artists admired Ito's personal example of steadfast commitment to the highest ideals of art, even at the cost of speed, sales, or professional advancement.
Ito began as a watercolorist influenced by synthetic cubism, Dufy, Bonnard, and Hofmann. Surrealism gradually entered her work in Chicago. Two children born in the early 1950s occupied most of ther time for several years, during which she mastered oil painting. As "Miraculous Mandarin" (1959) demonstrates, by the end of the decade she had initiated her mature approach dominated by simplified, biomorphic shapes, later often combined with architectonic forms. A late masterwork, "Door to the Sea (1981) summarizes her achievements. At once adventurous and serene, her representation and imagination converge, alluding to experience, memory, and the dream of a perfect work of art. -Morgan, A., Heller,J. & Heller, N. (Eds) North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A biographical dictionary
This work is one of the original 1971 collection purchases.
1977 photo of Miyoko Ito in her studio by Sandra Jorgensen, Elmhurst University Art Collection.
