The event is free but requires sign up. Limited capacity.

In this lecture curator and writer Jordan Stein explores the evolution of Miyoko Ito’s painterly practice, and the construction of physical and psychological landscapes in her dreamlike abstractions. He also shares his recent projects on Ito, including her first ever monograph and first two solo institutional exhibitions in nearly 40 years, aiming to situate her efforts within a history of late 20th century abstract painting. 

Miyoko Ito is known for her enigmatic, dreamlike works that hover between abstraction and figuration. Blending Surrealism, Cubism, and post-painterly abstraction, her work defies easy categorization, instead forging a unique visual language. Planes of color subtly suggest—without directly depicting—architectural spaces, landscapes, furniture or portals, while ambiguous forms evoke body parts, like heads or tongues. Often the spaces that Ito creates have an almost spiritual quality, quite distinct from many of the artists in this exhibition who work more concretely with physical space.

Though loosely associated with the Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and 1970s (who countered art movements such as minimalism and post-minimalism with graphic figuration), Ito’s approach was more ethereal than that of her peers, who often drew upon the grotesque. Her paintings seem to render memories or interior landscapes that are open to multiple interpretations. In her later career, soft ochres, pinks, blues and greens—applied in translucent layers—create a luminous quality suggesting both natural light and psychological depth.

Miyoko Ito (1918–1983) was born in Berkeley, USA and worked in Chicago, USA from 1944 until her death.

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Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. He is the author of Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts (Pre-Echo Press, 2024) and Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove Press, 2021). He has independently organized exhibitions at venues such as the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA), Artists Space (New York), Yale Union (Portland, OR), San Francisco City Hall, Matthew Marks Gallery (New York), and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. In 2017, he founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space that aims to link past and present through the varied presentation of critical—and often overlooked—artworks, histories, and ideas. 

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