OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE ART HISTORIAN KUNIKO SATONOBU SPIRIG DOCUMENTS THE LIFE AND VISION OF THE MODERNIST PAINTER TERUKO YOKOI (1924-2020)

A JAPANESE ARTIST WHO SPENT MOST OF HER LIFE IN SWITZERLAND FUSED ABSTRACTION WITH MEMORIES OF HER HOMELAND

Published on July 30, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

TOKYO — Many are the artists who, although they contributed in distinctive, innovative, and notable ways to modern art’s evolution, still remain less well known than they deserve to be. Often, the keepers of modern art’s recognized canon and the mainstream historical narrative that props it up — certain influential art historians, critics, museum curators, and art dealers with reputations to protect (their own or those of the artists they champion) — don’t know what to do with or where to place the life stories and achievements of these other remarkable art-makers.

The Japanese-born artist Teruko Yokoi with her abstract paintings featuring her signature diamond motif, Chelsea Hotel, New York, 1959; photo ©2025 Estate of Teruko Yokoi, from the book *Teruko Yokoi: Art in the Making* by Kuniko Satonobu Spirig (Zürich: Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, 2025); photo of the book’s pages by brutjournal

Unfortunately, when such artists were women and, often, the wives or life partners of better-known male artists who were celebrated by the market and the broader art establishment, they have languished in the shadows of such famous men.

When such male artists die, often their female-artist partners end up shouldering the burden of overseeing, if not personally administering, many aspects of their estates, thereby forsaking the time and attention they normally would be able to devote to their own art-making.