Teruko Yokoi Japanese, Swiss, 1924-2020
Klang Des Wassers II, 1971
Oil on Canvas
49 3/4 x 39 7/8 in
126.4 x 101.4 cm
126.4 x 101.4 cm
Signed and dated upper right
Further images
By the early 1970s, settled in Bern, Switzerland, Yokoi’s work had shifted toward a more distilled modernist aesthetic. Klang Des Wassers II (“The Sound of Water”) demonstrates her sensitivity to...
By the early 1970s, settled in Bern, Switzerland, Yokoi’s work had shifted toward a more distilled modernist aesthetic. Klang Des Wassers II (“The Sound of Water”) demonstrates her sensitivity to minimal form and tonal nuance. A nearly monochromatic background is interrupted by a dark, undulating silhouette edged with bands of blue, suggesting geological strata or the movement of water against rock. The softly rendered, translucent shapes that drift across the canvas evoke the mist that shrouds the landscape as viewed from the base of a waterfall. The painting invites the viewer to experience not only the image but also the imagined rhythm, the steady roar and pulsing cadence of falling water that drowns out its surroundings and opens a contemplative space for the mind to wander. This meditative canvas illustrates Yokoi’s ongoing dialogue between Eastern traditions of simplicity and restraint, and the reductive language of European postwar abstraction. It also exemplifies her ability to translate natural phenomena into serene, formal abstractions that transcend direct representation.