■ Ansei UCHIMA (1921-2000)
Uchima was born 1921 in Stockton, California. In 1940, he went to Tokyo to study architecture at Waseda University. After the war, Uchima met the sosaku hanga artist Onchi Koshiro, and began to venture into abstract woodblock printing. He held his first solo exhibition at Yoseido Gallery (Tokyo) in 1955. In 1960, he relocated to New York, where he received twice a Guggenheim Fellowship for print artists (1962 and 1970). Uchima taught at Sarah Lawrence College, and held a position as an adjunct professor of printmaking at Columbia University. He died in 2000, aged 79.

■ Toshiko UCHIMA (1918-2000)
Born 1918 in Manchuria, Uchima enrolled as a student at Dalian Institute of Painting in 1928. In 1939, she completed her studies at Kobe College. Since she moved to Japan, she furthermore studied with the painter Ryohei Koiso. In 1953, Uchima became a member of the Democratic Artists Association founded by Q Ei. Around the same time, she met Sadajiro Kubo and Shuzo Takiguchi and started to experiment with abstract oil painting, woodblock prints and lithographs. In 1955, she became a founding member of the Japanese Women’s Print Artists Association. Three years later in 1958, Uchima participated in the Triennial of Contemporary Printed Art in Grenchen (Switzerland), subsequently shifting her main activities to the United States. Since 1960, she lived in New York. Since around 1966, Uchima’s work started to center on box-like assemblages and collages made of impressions on wood and stone. Her works have been exhibited across the United States and in Japan. When her husband, fellow print artist Ansei Uchima, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage in 1982, she devoted most of her time over the next 18 years to take care of him, though she also continued to be active as an artist. Uchima passed away in 2000.

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